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Emails Show Feds Asking Florida Cops To Deceive Judges About Surveillance Tech
Advocatus Diaboli sends this excerpt from Wired:
Police in Florida have, at the request of the U.S. Marshals Service, been deliberately deceiving judges and defendants about their use of a controversial surveillance tool to track suspects, according to newly obtained emails (PDF). At the request of the Marshals Service, the officers using so-called stingrays have been routinely telling judges, in applications for warrants, that they obtained knowledge of a suspect's location from a 'confidential source' rather than disclosing that the information was gleaned using a stingray.
It won't stop until the DoJ actually starts handing out serious penalties instead of a slap on the wrist for this sort of behavior. I'm talking jail time.
String them up in front of the courthouse.
odd that an actual paper trail was allowed to be released...wonder who forgot the degausser this time?
Isn't this kinda like....um.... perjury? I'm pretty sure that kind of thing isn't taken lightly by the judiciary. Furthermore, isn't it law enforcement meant to be role models for following the law?
Problem is, the same people who initiate the prosecuting are in on it. Have you heard of a guy named Eric Holder?
Can somebody explain to me how this could possibly fall outside the definition of "perjury"? This seems like exactly the situation for which "contempt of court" was created.
When (e.g.) a forensic examiner is discovered to have manipulated or faked various test results that were introduced by the prosecution, this often results in hundreds of prior cases being reviewed. Every case that person touched as an expert or as a witness is called into question. Verdicts are vacated, people get released from prison.
Shouldn't that scenario be playing out here? Any case in which a supposed "confidential informant" was used in these Florida jurisdictions is now potentially in question. Defense attorneys should be lining up over this.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Let's see if you are allowed to own and use a stingray (which is basically a cell phone tower mimic). I wonder how innocuous the police will think they are then.
Have the manufacturer of the "so-called Stingray", whatever that means, change the branding or release a version called "confidential source".
After all, one of those "so-called Stingrays" killed Steve Irwin.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
We don't need warrants. We don't need to disclose our methods. We don't need to tell the truth.
We're the fucking cops, and anything we do is OK because it's done in the name of justice.
Wake up, America. Your police state is happening all around you.
I seem to remember an old jailbreak app for iPhones, called Signal I think, that triangulated positions of the cell towers you were connected to and plotted them on a map. I wonder if something like this could be used in an app, to warn people when a stingray was capturing their signal. If your app "remembers" the positions of towers, and it suddenly sees a new one, or it sees one that is not stationary, seems to me that'd be a good sign that something wasn't right. Is this possible, or am I misremembering?
Even better would be if the app connected with others to create a crowd-sourced database of where and when they are used.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
Its no different than all the youtube videos that show people how to break the law and start off with a "this is for education purposes only" line.
It's significantly different, because these people are in positions of power in the government and have the ability to easily ruin people's lives.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Why, exactly, do you think it alright to make this issue partisan? Did the Obama administration pass the Patriot Act? Did the Obama administration create the secret courts? Which surveillance laws, exactly, did Obama have passed?
The fact of the matter is, GOVERNMENT is out of control. Two administrations, one led by each of the major parties, has abused the system, and encroached on the rights of American citizens. The first administration oversaw the enactment of these unjust laws, the second administration is merely pushing the boundaries of those laws.
The problem is GOVERNMENT, the problem is not a specific administration.
Let us address the real problem, and let's stop using Obama as the boogeyman. The real boogeymen are the DNC and the GOP.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Perjury anyone? Shouldn't there be a whole bus load of policemen going to jail? I am fairly certain that any of us would be going to jail if we deliberately falsified documents going to a judge for something as serious as a search warrant.
This would be an excellent exercise in eliminating a whole swath of police who don't respect our rights. I would also hope that they put them in general population so that they can encounter first hand the monsters that their injustices have created.
The feds are probably scared that if state cops release all this info (or allow it to be brought up in a court where defense lawyers could get the info in questioning), it could A.Allow the bad guys to figure out how to detect these devices (and therefore not do anything incriminating over their phones when they detect one or possibly even find ways to avoid the monitoring all together by e.g. switching carriers for their throwaway phones) or B.Give the bad guys information they could use to get a judge to say "you need a warrant to do what you did, you didn't get one therefore your evidence is inadmissible"
Depends on who you ask. Their excuse here is that they're not wiretapping anything, they're just playing 'Marco Polo' with your phone while moving around so they can triangulate where you are so then they can get a warrant. Supposedly, they aren't listening to your calls (not that you'd have any way of verifying that or even challenging it in court) so it doesn't count as wiretapping. In reality, this is taking a page out of the NSA's playbook and trying to skirt the law on a technicality.
What they don't tell you about the Stingray is the all sorts of illegal things it has been developed to do as a "fake" cell tower. This thing is capable of far more than triangulating a cell phone's location, all of which is a huge invasion of privacy. Because of the Stingray tech, there is only one real way to protect yourself from surveillance while carrying a cell phone: removal of the battery.
The cops are being encouraged by the government and Harris Corporation to keep from revealing these devices as a source because they want to avoid a situation where they have to reveal everything the Stingray is capable of doing.
For those who can make the connection, let's just say that I've lived in Melbourne for years.
It isn't a partisan issue, but if anyone can fix it, it's the current administration. Previous administrations are no longer in power and future administrations haven't been elected yet. Obama could stop it but doesn't, so of course it's his fault.
Forget subsequent trials. It will also undermine the previous trials and those convictions could be thrown out.
All of those officers lied on the stand and should be charged as such.
A stingray is basically just a base station emulator, right? It should be theoretically easy to detect whether or not your phone is connected to one based on the output power setting on your phone's radio, and knowing the distance to the legitimate towers around you.
Since all phone adjust their power output to the minimum necessary to maintain a link to the base station, If the power setting on your phone is too low for the distance, there is a good chance you are connected to something much closer to you.
All we need is an app that knows where all of the towers are located (freely available information on the web) and that can make a reasonable calculation as to how much power should be required to maintain a link for a given phone position.
Any thoughts?
It's the job of NSA/CIA etc to be trying to do all this shit as much as possible and with as high a quality as possible. It's not their job to pay attention to the constitution or any of that. The failure is in the whole "checks and balances" aspect of our system not checking or balancing.
Perhaps if you ask right, such as "What are the coordinates of cell towers we shouldn't destroy?"
Did the Obama administration pass the Patriot Act?
yes, actually he did, he re authorized it making it his now, he could have easily declared it over but instead he kept the power. it is his fault that we still have it
Did the Obama administration create the secret courts?
we dont know if he did or not, but we do know he is using them, there is no point in worrying about past presidents abuse when we have a current one abusing power
Which surveillance laws, exactly, did Obama have passed?
once again we simply dont know being that the most transparent government is about as transparent as tar, but we do know that under obama surveillance has increased, again this is something that he could have rolled back but didnt
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Actually, it *IS* their job.
Meanwhile, this is the Department of Justice. It is most CERTAINLY their job to obey the Constitution and such basics as not commit or suborn perjury.
It's not simply that they're "just doing their job." Some of them justify what they do that way. But some of them have convinced themselves that they're on the side of the angels. They catch "bad guys"—that's the simpleton phrase they use. So, anything they do is okay, because the ends justify the means.
What?! Do you like bad guys or something?
The average person cannot integrate anything so abstract and complicated as the need for constitutional restraints: meaning, why government power needs to be restrained, even if in the short run of particular cases the "inconvenience" of such restraints lets the "bad guys" get away. The only thing the average person is able to digest is so-called "patriotism," the fight of "good guys versus bad guys" (in this case, literally, cops and robbers), and the kind of chauvinism of association that allows them to believe that they and the other great bunch of guys on the job are hard at work doing good.
This kind of mentality can accommodate any kind of political circumstances just as happily as any other—America, Iran, Cuba, the old Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, or what have you. That's what's so scary.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
Why, exactly, do you think it alright to make this issue partisan? Did the Obama administration pass the Patriot Act?
Yes. Barack Obama signed it into law on December 31st, 2011. For the rest of your points, refer to my second sentence.