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Indiana State Police Acknowledge Use of Cell Phone Tracking Device
An anonymous reader writes "Indiana state police acknowledge use of cell phone tracking device 'Stingray', tricking all cellphones in a set distance into connecting to it as if it were a real cellphone tower. A joint USA Today and IndyStar investigation found earlier this month that the state police spent $373,995 on a device called a Stingray. Often installed in a surveillance vehicle, the suitcase-size Stingrays trick all cellphones in a set distance ('sometimes exceeding a mile, depending on the terrain and antennas') into connecting to it as if it were a real cellphone tower. That allows police agencies to capture location data and numbers dialed for calls and text messages from thousands of people at a time."
Who controls the Data that is collected?
Because fuck you, that's why.
Silence is a state of mime.
Why is the most armed nation such pussies? Scared of any and every damn thing.
Fuck the government.errr....my bad...FUCK the citizens!!!!!!!!!!!!
ps....fuck your karma, slashdot.
Doesn't the FCC regulate the frequencies used by cell phone towers? Do state police have the authority to use them as well? Do they have a special license from the FCC?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
yes you do, fucking liar. It is called your dick. Go out in public and show it off and see if you get arrested.
I wonder about internal security first and foremost on this stuff.
Who in the **Indiana State Police** is monitoring the usage of this data? Some IT dude? State Police are especially 'bro' types b/c they have an inferiority complex.
What's keeping them from just parking outside a popular youth area on a Friday night and lurk when things are slow down at the precinct?
I"m saying, I question whether the people who approved this system even **know** what it is capable of and how the cops out in the field are using it on a daily basis.
We already know the NSA used their system to check in on former lovers and other such tawdry stuff..
Thank you Dave Raggett
I RTFA and got the first two words of the headline backwards, reading "Police State Acknowledge Use Of Cell Phone Tracking Device." Guess it's really the same either way, though.
They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
-- Benjamin Franklin
I have nothing to hide, and if this helps catch bad guys, it's still a tremendous invasion of privacy and morally wrong under just about any definition of "moral" you want to use (aside from the "moral = whatever the hell I say it is" definition that seems to be increasingly more prevalent).
If I spend my spare time doing the most boring, non-threatening things imaginable, that is nobody's business but my own. If I spend my spare time doing unusual or asinine things, that's still nobody's business but my own. If I spend my spare time hurting other people and committing crimes that result in damage... then hey, maybe it's time to look into what I'm doing, not before.
How is this not illegal wiretapping?
if GPS determines the phone hasn't moved, question this new "tower"...
Mostly random stuff.
Things like this are just going to get worse and worse until either someone in power does something drastic or else we wind up having a revolution / civil war, etc.The sad thing is that I understand the intentions behind it all (behind the things that place privacy in jeopardy, I mean), but we've reached such a fine-grained level of existence now with so many aspects of our everyday life that the gray areas separating privacy and security are no longer "minor inconveniences" but rather tragic infringements upon civil liberties, etc.
Long story short, if things like this keep happening (as well as continual unemployment increases, fraudulent laws being passed, etc.), sooner or later, something big is going to go down. There's only so much people can take.
It is a joke to the elitists in power, and the joke is on you. They have been in power for thousands of years, selectively inbreeding. They are psychopaths, they will destroy everything before they let us destroy them. Answer to the topic of this question, don't use a cell phone.
There is only so much people can take until you are taken away and executed for not behaving. Not standing in line, that is the end game of all of this. It happened in Germany not so long ago.
Unfortunately most don't get it. You think you can out gun these guys, you are fooling yourselves. They'll send the drones in with surgical strikes against the militias, it will be a fucking war zone if you think there will be revolution.
They're "Peace keepers". You'd do well to remember that, citizen.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
in the apathic neck of the woods.
Its already been proven the cops and the feds can do whatever they want without repercussions.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Have gnu, will travel.
...it is also entirely unconscionable. How does this not send Capt. Dave Bursten's head spinning with cognitive dissonance...
So, 'tower dumps' require court orders (warrant?) for the police to gather the info - which presumably only includes the so-called metadata (yes, metadata is the important part), yet using this cell-tower-in-a-suitcase which has the potential to capture the actual content in addition to the metadata doesn't require a warrant? Even if they aren't gathering content, this is dragnet activity, which there are laws against.
In his case, its a minor offense.
I have nothing to hide, and if this helps catch bad guys, it's still a tremendous invasion of privacy and morally wrong under just about any definition of "moral" you want to use (aside from the "moral = whatever the hell I say it is" definition that seems to be increasingly more prevalent).
If I spend my spare time doing the most boring, non-threatening things imaginable, that is nobody's business but my own. If I spend my spare time doing unusual or asinine things, that's still nobody's business but my own. If I spend my spare time hurting other people and committing crimes that result in damage... then hey, maybe it's time to look into what I'm doing, not before.
Moxie Marlinspike had a great article/journal entry/essay on this topic. I'm not saying he's the next hemmingway, but I'd rather let him explain why we should all have something to hide.
TL;DR - Lots of good things were illegal, once. Big things, like equality (smaller things, too).
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
Once upon a time, working for some Russian defense project I used there a Cellular Modem. The Modem has lots of AT commands that precisely informed about almost everything. As I know, CDMA modems have a similar set of functions.
Then, the second fact. The stingray does NOT use the same frequency as a real tower. It uses any free frequency and real credentials (If it uses the real frequency it will immediately cause lots of interference). And it should overpower the real tower since the phones connect to the most powerful tower. The Chinese cellular suppressors use the same tactic.
What does it mean: Any sufficiently opensource phone ( http://neo900.org/#main for instance) can have a software that monitors the cellular connections for anything strange and immediately report it.
Also, the encoded GSM communications become trivial if you control your phone. It does NOT protect your metainfo but there are other means for it.
Indiana wants me, Lord, I can't go back there
Indiana wants me, Lord, I can't go back there
I wish I had you to talk to
Red lights are flashing around me, good Lord, it looks like they found me
Indiana wants me, Lord, I can't go back there
Indiana wants me, Lord, I can't go back there
I wish I had you to talk to...
banned the use of tracking devices without a warrant. If they are tracking thousands at the same time they need thousands of warrants, one for each trackee. I doubt this happens. I hope the ACLU is on to the Indiana cops like fleas on a dog.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
I have nothing to hide. If this helps catch bad guys, I'm all for it!
There have been over 2,000 people sentenced to life in prison or death, who have been exonerated after it's been proven they did not actually commit the crime.
You might not think you have anything to hide, but you WERE the only cell phone in the vicinity of a grisly murder last week. And hey, you don't have a solid alibi, the cops don't have any other leads, and the Prosecutor is up for an election soon. So you can either spend the next 10 years of your life trying to fight through the courts, and get a death penalty for raping and murdering that child, or you can agree to life in prison without parole you twisted fucking piece of shit.
And your comment comes from where. If your going to yell reactionary comments its best to be on topic.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
If you have nothing to hide, gathering this data about you is a waste of time and effort.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Several weeks ago I was driving from Michigan to Indiana on an interstate highway. Ordinarily my carrier (Verizon) has good coverage along interstate highways and I had a strong signal but was unable to place a call. I tried several times and nothing happened after I dialed the number and pressed the call button until the phone reported something like "unable to place the call - try again later." I wonder if the ISP was monitoring cell phones in the area or if Verizon's equipment was just fubar.
The State is NOT your friend.
"Whenever the cause of the people is entrusted to professors, it is lost." ~ V.I. Lenin
You seem to be badly confused on more than one point. Here is a start for you.
The Klan's Favorite Law
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
While I appreciate such well-reasoned arguments, I see the "you have nothing to hide" argument itself as fallicious. It flips the debate on its head, by assuming a false premise. I have nothing to hide -- you have something you want to know. About me.
So tell me: why should I help you with that? Why should I even allow that?
In other words, the question should not be "do I want to reveal something?". The question ought to be "why do you want to know something about me?"
No reason, no info. Give me a reason I like, and I'll consider your request for data.
(Note to the pedantic: read "society" for "me/I".)
They've all been putting up huge towers, paying land-owners large sums of money, paying for the towers, climbers of those towers, and all that comes with upkeep... and all they needed was an array of briefcases.
Seriously though, how the hell does the briefcase handle the connection between the cell phones? If those towers have to many users on them at once (and remember, each tower isn't dealing with ALL CELL PHONES that are within their range) they cannot handle the traffic, just try to use your celly at some local event where there are thousands of people all within close proximity of each other, using, more than likely, one cell tower - no can do.
I feel that this is one of those scare tactics that are being used in lieu of the Snowden leaks, that no one obviously gives 2 shits about. Because if anyone gets a warrant based on illegally-gained information, the case gets tossed out in court. So what's the point? If it's just a tool that the cops get to use, then I'll bet they're more than likely just listening to their wives/girlfriends. Nothing to fear here guys.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
And tax payer funds, to the tune of near enough to a half million a piece. Given the cost of these things, that seems like almost as big a crime as going fishing through peoples’ personal communications without due process. About eight times the median household annual income to *maybe* find out about somebody cooking some meth. Really can’t see any way that’s justifiable.