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Help Crowd-FOIA Stingray Usage Across America
v3rgEz (125380) writes "Collaborative investigative news site MuckRock is trying to take a national look at Stingray usage across America, and is looking for people to submit contact information for their local police departments and other law enforcement groups for a mass FOIA campaign. The submissions are free, but the site is also running a crowdfunding campaign to cover the cost of stamps, etc. on Beacon Reader."
This comes after news broke that the federal government has been pushing for local police to avoid disclosing their use of Stringray devices.
I know a lot of people whom like to put on their tinfoil hats and cry about government surveillance at every chance, but the reality is that we have never actually defined what is or isn't private in the digital age. The Internet is an amazingly complicated set of patents, protocols, technologies, and developments over the past 30-40 years of computing.
All of this is boiling over to what exactly is considered "YOUR" information in the digital age? Nobody seems to be asking this question. What information on your digital phone device belongs to you? And what information can the company/provider share with whomever they want?
Tracking your IMEI, Wifi MAC Address, and other tools is considered part of the network operations. The providers routinely keep logs of all of this information and use it to track you for a whole host of reasons. It's correlated across the organizations that control the hot spots. Companies do this all of the time, in perhaps significantly more intrusive ways than LEO using their "stingray" system, which no doubt is something that is a targeted-type application. Whereas the LEO will utilize these systems to target specific groups, events, or behaviors--marketing companies will track you and your device until the end of time. And, at the behest of a warrant, will provide as much information on your whereabouts, shopping habits, and intimate information as quickly as they can.
But that means this is a chance for the nation (and by nation I mean the public), to stand up for what they believe to be right and true in this regard. As an American, you can ask yourself what the freedoms and "spirits" of the founding laws intended, and fight to make it so. So often on slashdot, there are comments that ring with "it can't ever happen, the MAN is too powerful for us peons to do anything to change this". I always feel like I should (but seldom do) remind those folks of the Civil Rights movement. A group of citizens rose up and stood in the face of so many gov't entities and achieved their goal. I also feel that happened when President Obama ran in 2008. The results have been a little underwhelming vs. what the youth of the day thought they would get, but they did achieve it. I think the Civil Rights movement of my generation (30's) and the one that follows will be digital rights, privacy, and freedom to conduct your business without the watchful eye of big brother giving you a second glance, or a nod of approval.
I'd personally feel a lot better about all of it if the government wasn't working so hard to hide it. That's the stickler to me.
Well, I don't necessarily separate tracking for LEO purposes (and by extension, government agencies from top to bottom) and privatized tracking for "marketing" when I think of how we should proceed with privacy laws. More importantly, it's hard to apply the "spirit" of the law when there was never really a precedent for which the laws could have even begun to apply.
If you limit the scope of your privacy arguments to Constitutional protections, you may find at one point in the next 10-20 years your employer may know every bit of your shopping, browsing, buying, and daily habits at the request of a "background check". We're not too far off from this reality, credit bureaus are already using the credit reports of your Facebook connections to adjust your credit score.
So yes, LEO may be prevented from listening to your conversation--but every person in your HR organization knows exactly the type of person you are and can build a personality profile on you, and keep track of that. And if you think "privacy settings" on Facebook mean jack shit, I've got a mean boat in the desert to sell you.
This is absolutely, technically true.
However, since most people think of computing as the magic box with voodoo magic that makes my cell phone use wireless, they wrongfully assume that there's some sort of inherent "protection" of this data. What we are seeing on Internet forums everywhere are people kind of peeling back the onion layers of how the technology works and they're getting frightened by what they see.
yes "Stingrays: The Biggest Technological Threat to Cell Phone Privacy You Don't Know About" recalling
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...
You getting what federal/mil/security services would get over an area via a tame existing telco tower hardware/software at the local state and city level kit.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
You might end up on a fusion center list.
You might end up with a chat down by locals under a federal task force.
You might end up with a real federal chat down.
If your aren't on at least one watchlist your doing it wrong.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
quote[ A stingray is a controversial[1] electronic surveillance device for remotely capturing data from mobile telephones.[2] It is designed to mimic a cell tower so all the mobile phones in the area communicate with it and provide information, including location data. This can be done even when the phone is not being used to make a call.[2][3] Critics have called the use of the devices by government agencies warrantless cell phone tracking, as they have frequently been used without informing the court system or obtaining a warrant.[1] The Electronic Frontier Foundation has called the devices “an unconstitutional, all-you-can-eat data buffet.”[4] A stingray can be carried by hand or mounted on a vehicle, such as an unmanned aerial vehicle.[3] The devices are also referred to as “cell site simulators” and “IMSI catchers.” ]
from the wiki, first link in the article.
I think you're underestimating just how easily it is to collect data on you or how much data is actually collected.
You're assuming there are many hands in the pot, so to speak. That is, the information your wife and your doctor find can be different.
What if I told you that the wife and the doctor are storing the stuff they find in the same database, and are acting as both your wife AND your doctor?
Let me ask you this question: Can you list every single company that runs the rewards programs at various retail outlets? Grocery stores? Pharmacies? Who owns who? Who was purchased by who? etc.
You can't, you ignore it, it's too complex to figure out--but I guarantee you they have already shared every bit of data on you that is humanly possible to collect. And you do it all in the name of saving $0.10 on a box of cereal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Think of it as a small cell phone tower like kit that is cheap for a state, city and can offer remotely capturing data from mobile telephones.
Drive it into an area of interest and you become a cell phone tower like hardware to surround telco equipment.
In the distant past you would have to talk to the telco for logs or get access to the real telco hardware ie a mil/federal like tech task.
What local law enforcement want is logs like what a cell tower would for voice, messages, telco data (position) over an area.
Every powered phone in that area eg protest event, one person talking to the press, two people meeting face to face but been tracked.
If the phone is in use you get text messages, emails, cell/telco like information, may have an option for voice communications, position.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Your government forces you to pay for the police system and the many spy systems in place, and you have to pay *again* to find out how they've been using your money to spy on you.
Land of the free indeed. How did you let your government gain so much control?
You make a few good points Maga. What I meant to say is that the "spirit" of the founding laws that coincide with American ideals against unlawful, unwarranted search and seizure are defined to protect the public, and the individual from a questioning government. Basically, the government can not come into your home, and search for without a warrant showing just cause.
The fact that our digital culture has mechanized mass-surveilance, the likes of which were surely unimaginable when the founding laws were laid down, does not change the intent of the law. The government has to show just cause before it can search your effects or your person. Mass surveillance is specifically counter to that intent. There is no just cause for searching people at random, and that again is specifically what the law is written to keep from occurring.
However, if you post on FB, thats information you are choosing to share with a corporate entity. If they in turn share that data, its either in accordance with their policies, the law, or in violation of them, which means you have cause to lay a claim. Just like you can not kiss someone in public and expect privacy, you can not expect to post information to FB and expect privacy. If your friends can see it, they too can share it, which is not in violation of any contract or law.
The chance now is for people to rise up and assert when the information intended to be secure (such as encrypted data to another person), is syphoned and decrypted en masse; the government is in violation of both the "spirit" and the letter of the law.
Just create an app to aggregate tower data and funnel it thru a comparator to flag changes over time. For added bonus collect signal metrics with GPS location for flagged ID's to figure out exactly where these suckers are.
From previous disclosures usage had been sloppy with the same devices/identifiers reused as they are shipped all over the country. Detecting same stingray being moved from place to place should be cake with enough participants.
Stingrays would not be necessary if LEA's did their jobs and got a proper warrant. Dumber still use of these things cannot be concealed by the very nature of their operation... when you deploy this shit you unnecessarily run the risk of tipping off your adversaries.
In short LEAs who think stingrays are a good idea are idiots.
For what it's worth, the government has yet to use any of the information to actually destroy lives, at least lives of people that it wasn't coming to.
The most obvious counter-examples being Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden. The "crimes" these people committed were that they told the truth. I guess we could argue semantics about whether or not their lives were "destroyed" or not but I think we can all agree that their mobility is severely restricted and their long prospects aren't looking so hot.
The lesson to be learned here is to never tell the truth when discussing the working of government. It's the highest crime you can commit. Nothing good can possibly come from it.
It's the little tidbits like this that keep me here on Slashdot. I'm gonna research this app and probably give it a try. THANKS!
And you do it all in the name of saving $0.10 on a box of cereal.
First of all, the savings can be pretty significant if you shop smart. The thing is, before "loyalty cards," they were simply called "sale items" and had the same discounts. Nowadays though, they don't have to have a loyalty card to track you. They can track you by your credit/debit card. For example, Lowe's recently created the "My Lowe's" card, which doesn't give you any discounts but the supposed benefit is if you lose your receipt you can still return stuff. The thing is...even if you don't use your My Lowe's card, you can return stuff without a receipt because they can look it up based on your credit card number that you used to purchase the item. That shows that they're tracking your purchases even without a loyalty card. Wal-Mart doesn't have Loyalty cards, but you can bet your ass they're still tracking your purchases.
More importantly, even though these companies may be evil, they are not bound by the 4th amendment and their stated purpose is to make a profit for the benefit of their shareholders. The government, on the other hand, is bound by the constitution (even though they ignore it), and their stated purpose is for the people (even though it's now to benefit the profits of politicians' campaign contributors).
Generally, this tracking is justified as "non-identifying". To be valuable to the mall owners and retailers, they track IDs as they move around, so they can provide insight like "people who shop at the Dizzknee store are more likely to cross the mall for a cookie", and "72% of shoppers walked past location X, place advertising there." And state DOTs are using such systems to track traffic flows and speeds. The data does have legitimate uses.
But what they don't generally advertise is that a single act of correlation to an ID identifies all that person's past behavior. While it may not matter much to my privacy if they send me a coupon for The Cookie Shop, it will matter greatly if that ID is used elsewhere. "Hi, I'm from LIZARD insurance, and we see you drive through tough neighborhoods on the way to work every day. Here's your high-risk rate hike."
John