Slashdot Mirror
FBI Says Search Warrants Not Needed To Use "Stingrays" In Public Places
schwit1 writes The Federal Bureau of Investigation is taking the position that court warrants are not required when deploying cell-site simulators in public places. Nicknamed "stingrays," the devices are decoy cell towers that capture locations and identities of mobile phone users and can intercept calls and texts. The FBI made its position known during private briefings with staff members of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). In response, the two lawmakers wrote Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security chief Jeh Johnson, maintaining they were "concerned about whether the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have adequately considered the privacy interests" of Americans. According to the letter, which was released last week: "For example, we understand that the FBI's new policy requires FBI agents to obtain a search warrant whenever a cell-site simulator is used as part of a FBI investigation or operation, unless one of several exceptions apply, including (among others): (1) cases that pose an imminent danger to public safety, (2) cases that involve a fugitive, or (3) cases in which the technology is used in public places or other locations at which the FBI deems there is no reasonable expectation of privacy."
They do, however, require a license to transmit on those frequencies, which they do not have.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
So if I should happen to live next to a public place, and their signal penetrates my walls into my private residence, can I sue them for trespassing and for intercepting my calls in a place where I would have an expectation of privacy?
Of course not. *sigh*
And it is well known that our Government now considered ALL CITIZENS as criminals who merely have not been convicted yet.
The FBI doesnt get to make that decision, A Judge or congress will
Wow. Does the Constitution or Bill of Rights still work in your area of the country?
I'd like to know where it's still valid. Seems in the last few years there's been a lot of Hope that Change would happen.
And it sure as hell did.
This is addressed to the plutocrats, so ill keep it short and sweet. I get that the cloistered elite arent to be concerned with this, but your cash cattle certainly care. If we keep going down this road, you can expect to lose everything. we will stop using your app stores, stop using your wireless towers entirely, and form small mesh networks as was the case recently in China. these networks in 20 or 30 years will grow into an encrypted tor mesh, from which you will realize no revenue outside of the occasional new "cell phone" you decide to belch forth. your films and music will never earn another cent. and in the short term i'll buy an inexpensive mp3 player and leave my phone sitting at home, turned off, as most of us should. This should be of grave concern as well, considering ubiquitous passive wireless scanning systems employed in some of the largest stores in the world would certainly become far less reliable without a willing and oblivious captive audience.
and most importantly you'll have created a new generation of hardened hackers and leakers who now believe in retribution, as freedom is clearly subject to arbitrary terms and conditions outside the realm of a government by, of, and for the people.
Good people go to bed earlier.
They can do things that drastically infringe on basic rights and freedoms without oversight and consequences. The police in all its forms becomes more and more like criminal gangs and grab every bit of power than they can get.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Somehow I doubt they'd see it the same way if someone setup a rogue femtocell on the sidewalk outside an FBI office...
What does this button d$#%* NO CARRIER
Many of us suspect this has been true for a lot longer than people realize. The rot has been going on for a very long time.
If the FBI is openly saying the 4th amendment is meaningless, they've been ignoring it and the rest of the laws for a very long time.
As long as people accept "you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide", this will get worse.
Nobody gives a shit about their liberty, they want to know when American Idol is on, and when they can get the next iPhone.
9/11 just killed any last pretense of caring about the law and liberty. And that is spilling into the rest of the world, so much so that the US is more or less the enemy of freedom and liberty on the planet.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
i guess i didn't realize that the devices could distinguish if you are on a public side walk vs on your private lawn/apt next to the sidewalk...
Good thing these devices know about walls so that they don't accidentally listen to anyone in a non-public space...
There's a qualitative difference between talking quietly on your phone in an area with nobody else near enough to overhear, and shouting into it like a maniac in a crowd. There definitely IS a reasonable expectation of privacy in the first case.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The copper-cables running from my house cross plenty of public spaces. Still, tapping them requires (or used to require) a warrant.
Even if we accept this reasoning, the FBI's claim, I am afraid, would cover a cell-phone user making a call from the privacy of his house too.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
There was a recent decision that 24/7 camera surveillance of a suspect's house required a warrant even though it was somewhat equivalent to parking a police car in front of the house and watching.
There's an intuitive difference between the fact that a human being can hear you talking on the cell phone if they're nearby, and having a device that listens to every cell phone call AS IF it was a human being standing next to every person on both sides of every conversation within range. Courts are beginning to understand that.
We have a DOJ that ignores or unequally applies criminal law, natural law and the constitution.
We have judges who can be extremely activist and not rule properly.
We have a president who ignores the legislative branch when he doesn't get what he wants.
We have senators and representatives who take bribes, uh I mean campaign contributions.
What in the world could possibly go wrong?
> The copper-cables running from my house cross plenty of public spaces. Still, tapping them requires (or used to require) a warrant.
Are we sure about that? Perhaps the FBI would like to let us know what "exceptions" exist? Perhaps because the copper cables run over public spaces that makes for an exception in their book? They certainly wouldn't want to tell us unless they had to.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Nor is it illegal for a police officer not to read someone their Miranda rights. It simply makes it harder to build and try a successful case.
While I may not like it, arguably if they listen to everyone, but only go after the two caveats (danger to public safety, fugitive), that listening in on everyone else is "no harm no foul".
I think many are missing the distinction between whether something is "admissable in court" (warrantless seach) vs. whether it's illegal to do the search. My understanding is that detectives can, and do, conduct warrantless searches, but know it may not be admissible in court, and could even vacate other evidence (fruit of the poisonous tree). But does any enforcement agency try to stop or arrest agents making illegal searches? I don't think so. That is what makes it a legislative inquiry - a law would have to be passed making the eavesdropping a crime, not just useless to prosecutors.
Gently reply
Because when you are in a public place you have no right to the expectation of privacy.
Yes you do. Stop repeating that without even thinking about it.
You are communicating via a device that is generally not observable to people surrounding you. You might be sending text messages, IM's, photos, for example. Nobody around you can see that normally. This is all supposed to go over the air with GSM encryption - your phone using the strongest it can negotiate - to your carrier, who you have a contract with to carry your information. Then the signals are supposed to be switched over the phone network where it can't normally be intercepted without a warrant, and your data communications are not normally intercepted either.
The Stingray is specifically designed to masquerade as your carrier so it can get in the middle - aka wiretapping. It tries to downgrade the encryption *so that it can wiretap* and people can intercept communications that would normally be hidden from them.
If your argument was in any way true (i.e. because you are in a public place you have no expectation of privacy because anyone can hear you anyway), then the police would not need a stingray because they are local to that public place and they should just be able to walk up to you as a target and listen in in person, right? Except apart from the very specific case where you're blabbering way too loudly on a voice call, that just isn't true.
The very design of the Stingray condemns it as a wiretapping device.
If the cops can do it without getting any exceptional permissions, then it must not be a crime for private citizens to do it, either. Right? Right? (Why is everyone looking at me like I just said something amazingly naive? And WTF is with all the Blade Runner "little people" quotes? I saw that movie and don't remember that many midgets.)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.