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US Marshals Seize Police Stingray Records To Keep Them From the ACLU
An anonymous reader writes 'A routine request in Florida for public records regarding the use of a surveillance tool known as stingray took an extraordinary turn recently when federal authorities seized the documents before police could release them. "This is consistent with what we've seen around the country with federal agencies trying to meddle with public requests for stingray information," Wessler said, noting that federal authorities have in other cases invoked the Homeland Security Act to prevent the release of such records. "The feds are working very hard to block any release of this information to the public." ... "We've seen our fair share of federal government attempts to keep records about stingrays secret, but we've never seen an actual physical raid on state records in order to conceal them from public view," the ACLU wrote in a blog post today.'
Just another example of the "open administration"!
Orwell was just 30 years late on his predictions...
9/11
These kinds of shenanigans are going to continue until the American public puts a stop to it.
Note, I said the public. Not the government.
The government, and it's various tentacles, simply don't WANT it to stop. Even if diverse individuals composing said tentacles do.
It is simply one more way of maintaining some form of leverage against an increasingly interconnected population that can make it's own decisions and plans without a bunch of stuffed shirts and their ridiculous budgets.
It will continue until they are physically restricted from doing these things.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
There could be a number of reasons why they don't want the info public
1) It doesn't work that well, or there is an obvious defense against it they don't want public.
2) They've been abusing their power some how by collecting info on people not really suspects, and don't want to be hit up by every divorce lawyer in the country. ( not sure if that's really illegal).
3) They're idiotic power tripping jerks that think its an ultra secret thing that will cause all law enforcement to lose its effectiveness if more people know about it.
4) It contains evidence of alien life forms visits to our planet, and their preference for blackberry cell phones.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Actually, I'm surprised they didn't handle it this way from the start. That way the "private citizen" wouldn't even know that another department had "seized" their documents.
But maybe I've just been working on the Internet too long. I tend to be surprised when someone wants to deal with hard copy.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it.
Well, I don't know about you, but I feel safer knowing the NSA is keeping those filthy terrorists, the ACLU, away from information of high importance to national security. Why we don't jail anyone who even reads the Constitution is beyond me.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
06/03/2014 -- that was two (2) days ago.
#fail.
It will continue until they are physically restricted from doing these things.
Get real. Putting the Green or Libertarian parties in charge of the presidency and both houses of congress, with an overwhelming mandate to fix these issues, would be much, much easier and more successful than waging a successful war of violence on the federal government. "Grab your rifles and rise up" only works when you have the public at large passionately on your side. When that is the case in a modern republic, there are better tools available.
So, I've been thinking of how could we prevent such a rogue device from operating on the cellular network? The way it is done is pretty easy actually:
* First you have to create a database of longitude / latitude coordinates of where we find cell tower sites at 100% signal strength.
* Next we allow Android's baseband processor to issue handoffs to cell towers that are within range of the GeoIP coordinate database
* So when a Stingray device pretends to be a cell tower, and it is not within range of the geoIP coordinates database, it will be rejected
This could be easily implemented in Android... and you could also add notifications when a cell tower was rejected due to being too far away from the known cell tower real location.
Putting the Green or Libertarian parties in charge of the presidency and both houses of congress, with an overwhelming mandate to fix these issues, would be much, much easier and more successful than waging a successful war of violence on the federal government
How do you know what the Green or Libertarians will do when they have that kind of power?
How do you know what the revolutionary army capable of defeating the US federal government will do when it seizes control? How is that any better? How is it not, in fact, far less predictable?
That Haliburton, Enron, Koch Industries lackey!
If only this country would have elected a constitutional scholar, like Barack Obama...
Oh wait...
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
And this will end up in front of a judge, I'd be really, really, pissed.
I'd be throwing the book at everybody, the officers doing the seizing, their superiors for ordering it, everyone up the chain who even saw this happening. Anything and everything I think that applied I'd throw at them. Those documents were already subject to legal proceedings, I'd start with Obstruction and move up from there, finishing off with determining that their removal of these documents and irrational unwillingness to have them see the light of day in a court house demonstrates they prove criminal activity. After all, if you are the Department of Justice, but scared of your actions being examined in court something has gone very wrong.
If there really was a good reason to withhold them you file it with the Court and the Court orders them sealed, Law enforcement over stepping their authority and messing with Legal proceedings is something that would royally piss me off as a judge.
The NSA might get to hide behind National Security and their Classified Courts, but the DoJ just plain inst in that line of work, and that kind of 11th hour bullshit just doesn't fly.
Government is a leaving, breathing thing. It subsists on liberties. The more liberties it consumes, the bigger it gets. The bigger it gets, the more liberties it needs. It has no sense of moderation and will consume liberties until there no more. Then it will die. Then, like the Phoenix, another will rise from the ashes and start the whole process again.
I would have a sig but I am too busy updating programs and restarting my computer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5gRIud57jQ
A majority of people in society aren't deep philosophical thinkers. They want to do their 40 hours, and go have a beer and watch football. Police are a fair cross section of society, so most cops aren't going to stop and ask if what they are doing is a fundamental violation of a person's constitutional rights, unless it is a pretty sever deviation for normal behavior. (Ex: beheading perps caught in the act)
I don't think most cops think too much about it, they have plenty of more immediate problems to keep busy with.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
How do you know what the revolutionary army capable of defeating the US federal government will do when it seizes control? How is that any better? How is it not, in fact, far less predictable?
I never said it was better. There are more than those two options.
""This is consistent with what we've seen around the country with federal agencies trying to meddle with public requests for stingray information"
Another word, the US government is becoming more and more fascist and more and more the citizens of the United States of America are losing control of their own so-called Democratically elected government
Looking at social media, and seeing who exactly is yelling "guns and revolution!" I would bet it would actually turn out to be WAY worse. Most everyone I see wanting "revolution" are conservative Christians who want their particular religion studied in public schools, evolution is "evil", pro-choice=murder, Obama is a Muslim/terrorist/socialist/fascist/Kenyan/alien/Satan, BENGHAZI!!!, warmongers, etc. If they got their way, the US would politically be more like Victorian England, with the Bush family as our new Monarchs.
Yeah. No.
I'm a Realist.
There's a political monoculture in Washington. Everyone largely agrees about the big stuff. So they wrangle, endlessly, over the small stuff, inflating the appearance of importance in an attempt to differentiate themselves. In the end, the net difference is still zip.
There's also the fact that these agencies are USED to lying to and misleading anyone with authority over them. Heads will nod, and people will scurry around, appearing to "do something". In the end, nothing will actually change. Or the people giving the orders will have a "sudden change of heart".
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
He himself retired from the redacted state police after 12 years, some spent undercover. He said that for the most part the idealists who want to save the world get washed out by the corruption by 5 years and anyone who's stayed longer than that is getting more out of it than their salary.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
The feds are working very hard to block any release of this information to the public.
Now are the referring to some records in Florida related to one specific investigation? Or Stingray records in general? Because if its the general case, too late. That info. is out there.
Some unbelievably inept local law enforcement agencies are using this gear and if you know some of the people involved, there are no secrets left.
Have gnu, will travel.
We need to focus both parties and maybe a third. Also let's make EFF our NRA.
I want a revolution.
I love what used to be my country, the old USA. I want the freedoms and privacy we once had, back.
I'm not a christian, I'm a total non-believer in any religion.
I'm not a gun nut, don't own guns, don't want to.
but I still see the need for a reboot of our government. it would be nice if it could be non-violent. however, my xtal ball says that won't happen since the bad guys in power are not going to give back power willingly.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Demand the unlawful order in writing and signed by the bastard in charge.
In the meantime check out Spidey.
I'm sure Obama will put a stop to it.
Right?
Really I view this sort of thing as just another aspect of militarization of law enforcement. This sort of thing is wartime SIGINT gear. It should require judicial oversight and warrants for use in civilian populations. The fact that it's use is treated like a state secret is a big fat warning that the law enforcement agencies are trying to protect something that they realize would create a serious public outcry if people realized it's capabilities.
I *don't* want a revolution, but I'm worried we're headed for one.
I love what my country used to stand for, and recognize that it's been largely gone for a few generations now. The whole process consists of slowly chipping away at inalienable rights until the rights are narrowly tailored and the exceptions are broad, instead of the other way around.
I'm not a christian, though I was raised as one.
I'm not a gun nut, do own guns, and respect anyone else's choice on the matter so long as they equally respect mine.
I also see the need for a reboot of our government, but recognize that it's a 50:50 shot on whether it would make things better or worse on a large number of issues.
We currently have 2 parties, each harping on how they're protecting our rights while the 'other guys' are trying to destroy the country. Meanwhile, they're both trying as hard as they can to destroy the rights of a subset of citizens. One side thinks that if you own guns, you're automatically dangerous and should have your right to do so stripped from you. The other side thinks that if you love someone of the same gender, you're a deviant danger to society and you should be prevented from doing so. And they're both working as hard as they can to strip you of your money so it can be given to wealthy powered interests.
There's no party with a moral high ground across the board. They're both fucked up, just in different ways, and have their die-hard supporters who are convinced that the other side is going to cause the world to explode.
Was that during the cold war/vietnam pray tell?
Or the bit in between with the war on drugs and desert storm.
What is this "old USA" you speak of?
I am failing to see what has changed except the technology...
I am actually being serious here...
That's a BS excuse. Obama could fire the people responsible for this, or just order them to release the records. There ARE jbts in the US government, and as head of the government, Obama is head of the jack booted thugs.
"Recently, the Tallahassee police department revealed it had used stingrays at least 200 times since 2010 without telling any judge because the device’s manufacturer made the police department sign a non-disclosure agreement that police claim prevented them from disclosing use of the device to the courts."
Huh?
Imagine if there was a bloodless, non-violent revolution and the media chose not to broadcast it:
http://guardianlv.com/2013/12/...
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Then you have the quiet crazies who are more likely to act instead of being internet tough guys. The morons who spout off don't worry me much since they are like most slashdotters in that they typically talk a big game on the internet but don't ever follow through. A perfect example is all the people who never bother contacting their various elected representatives to voice their opinion but piss and moan about what their representatives do.
Time to offend someone
If your revolution is non-violent, it will be stomped into the mud and hijacked by the violent. Things will be worse for years and years. They might get as good as they are now in your children's lifetime. They will be impressed because they didn't know how good we have it.
Cheap storage VM.
Obama could fire the people responsible for this, or just order them to release the records.
No he can't and those people know it. In order to reduce graft, those powers were removed from The President in 1883.
I know it's much easier to demonize one person than to understand a complex system made up of thousands of people, but if you want to have any effect in the world you're going to need to learn how the government actually works.
that means your neighbor was a bad cop then too? shaking down dealers and pimps for quick cash? Picking out random homeless people to beat to death when he is in the right mood? Shooting anyone who resists or disrespects him?
They've been doing this for years
I think that the parent confused an ideal with reality. The ideals laid out in our Constitution and Declaration of Independence are valuable, but the US has yet to ever fully live up to them. I think that it's more important to look forward to what we could be than to wish to be something we never were. (End results may be the same, but one involves planning ahead and the other involves self-delusion.)
It is interesting to hear about the lengths people go to protect information about this thing, but what is it?
I believe I was using Socratic irony. :)
From my perspective "this" is nothing different to what has occurred over all of human history. This is not an American thing, this is a human thing.
The rich and powerful wanting to be more so and using death, destruction, threats and violence to achieve this. With every new age come new tools that are used to achieve the very same aims with even greater ferocity and/or efficiency and/or mass effect.
When has it ever been different?
The Pendleton Act only says that civil service employees can't be required to make political contributions , and can't be fired FOR FAILURE TO MAKE POLITICAL CONTRIBUTIONS. The president can fire executive branch appointees for any other reason (except race, religion, age over 40).