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FBI Attempts To Prevent Disclosure of Stingray Use By Local Cops

Posted by Soulskill on from the annnnnd-we're-back dept.

Ever since the public became aware that law enforcement is making use of StingRay devices — hardware that imitates a cellular tower so that nearby mobile devices connect to it — transparency advocates have been filing Freedom of Information Act requests to see just how these devices are being used. But these advocates have now found that such requests relating to local police are being shunted to the FBI, who then acts to prevent disclosure.

ACLU lawyer Nathan Wessler says, "What is most egregious about this is that, in order for local police to use and purchase stingrays, they have to get approval from the FBI, then the FBI knows that dozens of police departments are using them around the country. And yet when members of the press or the public seek basic information about how people in local communities are being surveilled, the FBI invokes these very serious national security concerns to try to keep that information private."

5 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. Downtime [Offtopic] by Soulskill · · Score: 4, Informative

    Before anyone asks: we've been down most of the day because of a disk that went bad in one of our servers. Siteops has been slaving away at a lengthy restore, and hopefully we're good to go, now. Apologies!

    1. Re:Downtime [Offtopic] by Soulskill · · Score: 4, Informative

      It was more than a simple hardware failure -- the storage cluster software we're using had an issue that not only obliterated data, but managed to take out its own repair functionality. We had proper backups and didn't lose anything permanently, but had to do a much larger rebuild than if a disk just died.

  2. Re:It's called and end-run by skr95062 · · Score: 4, Informative

    According to the FBI they don't need a warrant when using a sting ray, as anyone that they might pick up using it has "No Expectation of Privacy".
    That statement was made a few weeks ago by the FBI no less.

  3. Government afraid of the people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    When the original was published, hiding spy device information was not the meaning.

    there is a open source solution
    https://github.com/SecUpwN/Android-IMSI-Catcher-Detector

  4. Re:Since you are replying... by Soulskill · · Score: 3, Informative

    Well, as I mentioned in another comment, the problem was more than a simple hardware failure. From what I've heard hanging around the siteops team while they worked on it yesterday, the problem wasn't something easily foreseeable -- complex software has complex interactions, sometimes. Keep in mind that we're also sharing infrastructure with SourceForge and a few smaller sites.

    Also, for as much abuse as Dice takes around here, they really had nothing to do with the outage. Our infrastructure and teams were in place before the acquisition, and Dice doesn't interfere with that. It's our own fault. As for valuing Slashdot -- the degree to which they've left us alone to operate the site suggests to me they value it just fine. They haven't done anything to the editorial side -- I go months at a time without even interacting with anybody from Dice. People who dislike the Beta like to blame Dice for it, but it isn't as if we didn't do site redesigns before the acquisition.