Judge Unseals 500+ Stingray Records

An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from Ars Technica: A judge in Charlotte, North Carolina, has unsealed a set of 529 court documents in hundreds of criminal cases detailing the use of a stingray, or cell-site simulator, by local police. This move, which took place earlier this week, marks a rare example of a court opening up a vast trove of applications made by police to a judge, who authorized each use of the powerful and potentially invasive device

According to the Charlotte Observer, the records seem to suggest that judges likely did not fully understand what they were authorizing. Law enforcement agencies nationwide have taken extraordinary steps to preserve stingray secrecy. As recently as this week, prosecutors in a Baltimore robbery case dropped key evidence that stemmed from stingray use rather than fully disclose how the device was used.

Comments

Consent of the Governed

[saloomy]

You can not consent to what you do not know. A free society mandates that the governing be done in open view of the public. Otherwise, how can we consent to what we are unaware of. As Lincoln said: "... of the people, by the people, for the people..."

Re:Consent of the Governed

[cold fjord]

The US is a Republic, not a direct democracy. The lawmakers are representatives that do some things behind closed doors out of practical necessity. Abraham Lincoln had people spying on the Confederacy, and that wasn't done in the open view of the public either. There is always going to be a tension between the need to keep the public informed and the need to keep some things secret. Trying to resolve that tension by asserting there must be no secrets in government is a losing game and it goes against practically all experience and wisdom.* One may reasonably argue about where the boundaries should be, not not about the practical necessity of the government keeping some things secret.

*Hence the popularity among some on Slashdot.

Re:Consent of the Governed

[saloomy]

...certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it ... End of story. There can be no action taken by a government on behalf of its people argued to be for its people, yet conceal that action from its people in the name of its people. It's oxymoronic.

need to keep some things secret

Need to keep things secret? Who decides what is needed to be kept secret? Patriots? Those who stand with liberty and freedom certainly don't.

Re:Consent of the Governed

[cold fjord]

You seem to hold some mistaken ideas about what "those who stand with liberty and freedom" actually do in some cases. The people that wrote that text you quote employed spies and kept some matters secret, both before and after the Revolution.

Resolution of Secrecy Adopted by the Continental Congress, November 9, 1775

Resolved, That every member of this Congress considers himself under the ties of virtue, honour, and love of his country, not to divulge, directly or indirectly, any matter or thing agitated or debated in Congress, before the same shall have been determined, without leave of the Congress; nor any matter or thing determined in Congress, which a majority of the Congress shall order to be kept secret. And that if any member shall violate this agreement, he shall be expelled this Congress, and deemed an enemy to the liberties of America, and liable to be treated as such; and that every member signify his consent to this agreement by signing the same.

Maybe you should read that again just so it sinks in - not keeping certain secrets could make you an enemy of the liberties of America in the eyes of the Founding Fathers.

Do you understand the meaning of representative government? The consent is to be governed, not to every single individual action of government.

Re:Consent of the Governed

[Uberbah]

The US is a Republic, not a direct democracy.

He didn't say it was. If you think Republic and Democracy are incompatible, you don't understand either term.

The US is an oligarchy in rhetoric only, in reality it is a republic in which corporations can't vote but citizen can. Election still determine the composition of Congress and it is Congress that makes the laws, not corporations, even if corporations can and do influence the contents of various laws.

What kind of dumbfuckery is this? The bank bailouts alone make a very bad liar out of you. The mandate to purchase for-profit health insurance further pulls back the curtain to reveal that you've put on your clown shoes.

Again.

Re:Consent of the Governed

[anegg]

A corollary to the indiscriminate use of broad data gathering technology is that it will likely lead to a desire on the part of the general public for more secure technologies to keep these abuses from affecting them. So the overreach may (eventually) lead to more secure technology being generally available, which means the bad guys will have it along with the general public. And law enforcement will be worse off than before. This problem was apparently recognized by the NSA but the cooler heads did not prevail, and we are seeing public Internet services becoming more secure, which will protect the public, but which will also protect the scum.

Re:Consent of the Governed

[Zontar The Mindless]

That would be just peachy if votes for particular candidates/parties actually counted for something.

It really amazes me that someone who appears to be as intelligent as you do cannot see the state-within-a-state that has grown up in the US since the Second World War. Just as Eisenhower warned it would.

Police legal authority

[currently_awake]

In the absence of a judicial order/warrant a police officer should have the same rights as any ordinary citizen, except when they see a crime being committed. If police can operate a stingray then anyone should be able to do so. If police can demand (and get) telephone records without cause then so should everyone else.

Re:Police legal authority

[currently_awake]

If the police have in their possession the full telephone meta-data for all phone calls, then we should be able to get that with an access to information request. Since it's not part of an ongoing police investigation and there are no privacy considerations in meta-data.

Re:Police legal authority

[AHuxley]

Re 'Either the contents are not sensitive"
Think back to the early cell standards. Who set them and why? Emerging cell networks had to be safer from random strangers but totally open in real time to govs and mil needs.
Cost, time and who works on the telco networks can also be important to local law enforcement officials.
Why risk a computer database entry or tracked code change in a national or global telco system? A number or location is now been tracked.
Who at the telco has seen or can track the local or national law enforcement sensitive database changes?
Local law enforcement officials become the telco connection in an area for a time and the only people who have full details on who is been tracked.
No courts, no requests to telco staff or vast databases, no lawyers later, media, FOIA for paper work at a city or state level. Just all the call data.

Re:Police legal authority

[meerling]

The fact that (onduty) police would rather throw away evidence gathered using Stingray that admit they used Stingray seems to heavily indicate that even the police don't believe that evidence gathered without a warrant through the use of Stingray can very well get them into legal trouble.
If you think I'm talking about the Stingray "evidence" being excluded, that obviously isn't it for two reasons. First, they themselves dropped it, which if that was the penalty they were worried about, it would be extremely self-defeating to do so. Second, they have a tendency to "throw it at the wall and see what sticks". If you don't understand that phrase, it means try everything you can get away with, and see what works and then go with that.

It is easy to infer from their secrecy and actions that they don't think what they are doing is legal. Of course, who's going to arrest them or slap their dirty hands because you know damn well it won't be the cops. I guess they just got some coal in their stocking now that one of judges has decided to break ranks and make this information available.

punishing Dice with griefer bots?

[globaljustin]

these extreme trolls are complex enough that they might mean something

i wonder what organization (and their PR wing) would be pissed that Slashdot published this story

it could be that if they can't keep it from being published then they systematically subvert it by putting racist/homophobic stuff as first post to make it obnoixious

in other words, sockpuppet griefers

NDAs

[NormalVisual]

Regarding the NDAs that have been signed with Harris and the government not to disclose information regarding the Stingray devices - I was under the impression that a civil contract could not override state or federal law, and any such clauses requiring such are non-enforceable. These judges need to be finding every single one of the officers and prosecutors in contempt when they present "but we're under an NDA" as an argument in a court of law.

Re:NDAs

[Zontar The Mindless]

That is why the U.S.A. has not declared any war in 50 years, so they can play word games and get around the geneva convention.
The only wars that the U.S.A has been declaring are against concepts: war, terrorist, etc.

See? The dangers from ACs trying to spread pernicious truths such as these is exactly why we need everyone's communications tapped at all times!

Living in Soviet USA

[Bar666Bar]

Poor people who have to live in countries like Russia, USA or North Korea. They don't know what is "freedom" anymore.
Government makes decision for them, poor chaps just need to bend over and take it in the asssssss

Re:Are these cell emulators licensed by the FCC?

[BlueStrat]

If a device is used on the airwaves in the cell phone bands to emulate a tower, then necessarily, it will have to have a transmitter. Is the device type registered by the FCC, does each emulator have a site license? Does each operator have a license to operate the device?

If it is a "cell phone test device" then it must be associated with a properly licensed technician.

The legal requirements to simply operate the device include much more than the rights of the person of interest. For that reason alone, the concealment of the use of the device would be reason enough to throw out any information obtained from it, even before any case law is considered.

IANAL, but I have had 6 different FCC licenses, and have had to jump through many hoops. (I think only 3 are current now).

The FCC is an Executive Branch agency, the same as the NSA, DoJ, etc.

If any bright-boy at the FCC *did* bring up the legal status concerning use of Stingrays FCC-regulation-wise, he'd be told to shut up, and also quite likely put on a surveillance list as a possible security/leak threat. "The most transparent administration in history" is extremely aggressive about stomping on whistelblowers and their families with government jackboots.

Strat

Human Body Cells?

[AndyCanfield]

I spent an hour trying to figure out what this posting meant. Wikipedia lists lots of meanings for "stringray" but none having anything to do with human body cells. And why would a policeman want to simulate the location of my human body cells? Stimulate, with a T, perhaps, painful like a stingray, but not smulate.

The missing keyword was "phone". I live in Thailand. They're not called "cell phones" over here, they're called "mobile phones". If anyone posts an article about (US cell) phones, I hope they throw in the word "phone" somewhere so that we over here can comprehend it.

Thanks.