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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."

20 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 Snotnose · · Score: 2, Funny

      Ahhh, I'd figured you flipped the switch to Beta, only to find out it was still Alpha.

    2. 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.

    3. Re:Downtime [Offtopic] by Nethead · · Score: 2

      Speaking of points of failure. I was helping out at a site that our corporate overlords purchased (makes things for airliners) that had an old SGI server that had one HD in it that is the boot device. They know nothing about SGI nor how to back it up, they don't have support for it. They say this is mission critical.

      Fuck me running.

      I think I'll have to build up a BSD box and dig through the garage for an old Adaptec SCSI card, maybe I can dd it, I hope.

      Or let it die, they deserve it.

      --
      -- I have a private email server in my basement.
    4. Re:Downtime [Offtopic] by ColdWetDog · · Score: 2

      * A * disk went bad?

      You guys still running this thing on Malda's old netbook?

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  2. How is this even necessary? by generic_screenname · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Law enforcement has access to this information *anyway* via the phone company. Many, probably most carriers are complying with warrantless wiretaps *anyway* - Verizon and ATT are known to do so. Is it really that goddamn hard for the police to ask for this data? And why does the FBI need to hide this?

    1. Re:How is this even necessary? by thieh · · Score: 2

      My guess is that they don't want to keep people for liasion to these companies on payroll, either because the police officers are becoming increasingly impaired in their social skills (As seen in increased frequency of PR messups and no-knock raids all over the place. If only they can spend time having someone to talk to people...) or being part of anti-union tactic (Most police forces in North america are unionized afaik)

    2. Re:How is this even necessary? by gl4ss · · Score: 2

      phone company might ask for a warrant you know...

      whereas they can try to argue that you're transmitting in public so they don't need a warrant. of course they wouldn't like to actually have to tell that in public.

      never mind that use of such devices would be highly illegal and against fcc regulations and that such devices are a crime against the person making the call and the phone company as well.

      they know they're fucked if the information of how the devices are used gets out so they don't want it out.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    3. Re:How is this even necessary? by Shakrai · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And why does the FBI need to hide this?

      I don't find it hard to believe that the FBI would have legitimate national security reasons (i.e., surveilling suspected foreign operatives or hostile non-state actors) for using technology of this nature and for wanting to keep the methods of using said technology close to their chest. It does beg the question of why they're so eager to share this sort of technology with other law enforcement operations though.

      It's either critical to national security or it isn't. In the former case why the hell are we pissing it away on trivial shit ranging from drug smuggling to murder? Sooner or later the methods will come out in a court case; you can't share this sort of thing with thousands of law enforcement officers and local/state prosecutors without a few of them eventually deciding to prioritize their own investigations/prosecutions ahead of "national security."

      For my money this is another blurring of the traditional line between Federal and State power. The Feds really need to concern themselves with bad actors from aboard and leave the States to do their own thing with mundane domestic criminals.

      --
      I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
      We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
    4. Re:How is this even necessary? by Etherwalk · · Score: 2

      And why does the FBI need to hide this?

      Because they are doing it everywhere.

      This is the most likely reason.

      By withholding details they let what seems to be a relatively small program expand until it covers the vast majority of cell traffic.

    5. Re:How is this even necessary? by swb · · Score: 2

      It's either critical to national security or it isn't. In the former case why the hell are we pissing it away on trivial shit ranging from drug smuggling to murder?

      I would guess if you talked to DEA/FBI/CIA, they would tell you that drug running and financial crimes are prime funding for terrorism and that the "real" reason they're so zealous about going after it is not because they give a shit about somebody getting high but that it allows them to gather intel and/or weaken terrorist organizations by disrupting their funding.

      I know, I know, it begs the question why drugs remain illegal if legalization would lower prices, greatly reduce the money black market producers make, etc. But this is where the politicians step in and make speeches about thinking of the children, moral dangers, etc.

      And this of course is where I put my tinfoil hat on and at least sort of believe that keeping drugs illegal is really about maintaining a justification for a surveillance regime that is orthogonal to drug enforcement. At the street cop level its about a reason to stop and frisk anyone, at the Federal level its about a reason to do data harvesting and mass surveillance.

  3. It's called and end-run by rahvin112 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The FBI provides a grant for the local police department to buy these because it's a legal grey area. The department purchases and runs them at the request of the FBI who reimburse the expenses. The FBI gets a copy of the data. The FBI is likely required by law to get a warrant to use these, where the locals aren't. So the FBI gets the locals to run the stuff then collects the data from the locals in normal legal data sharing agreements. (this is where the FOI requests fall flat, they should be requesting the financial agreement data between the FBI and locals to show that the FBI not only purchased the stingrays but pays the locals to run them).

    This end runs around the FBI's restriction. The FOI requests are a serious threat to the program by exposing the FBI deliberately breaking the law so the FBI declares national security and covers it up even though the vast majority (and likely all) of the times these are used is against drug crime, not terrorism.

    Declaring national security to avoid disclosing information is an end run around open government and allows people in government to break the law and violate peoples rights without the fear of disclosure. Every time embarrassing information or evidence of crime lays in data that should be public someone in government will declare it secret on national security grounds.

    1. 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.

  4. I wish I could use this excuse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Imagine everything you could get away with.

    "Do you know how fast you were going?" "National security"

    "Why are you home so late?" "National security"

    "Why did I find a camera in the toiler?" "National Security"

    "Why does my television record everything I say?" "National Security"

    "Why does windows bluescreen?" "National Security"

  5. So what, exactly, does the FBI do? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If the FOIA request is being made under the applicable state law, what does the FBI do about it? Is there a federal statute somewhere to the effect that 'no state public records law shall be construed as to release anything that might make the terrorists win and so on'? Do they have no official recourse; but a suitable amount of knowledge about how to throw a spanner in the process in a given state?

    It would seem that, if they are farming out the operation to a bunch of local cops who aren't cleared to do much beyond write traffic tickets, the data can't be too seriously 'national security' imperiling, nor would the mere interaction with the FBI change the fact that state agents are operating under the open records laws of their state, so how does this work?

    I assume that gathering all the names and adding them to an enemies list is an end in itself for the FBI, they get off on that kind of thing; but do they have any other ability to use the data?

  6. Slashdot Slashdotted ... was:Downtime [Offtopic] by redelm · · Score: 2

    ... and the failover was a Raspberry Pi model A. Ample :)

    Serious, this is the first prime-time multi-hour outage I can recall in 17 years. Far better than most sites!

  7. Will it become illegal to use non-cellular phone? by mi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Today, if you deposit cash into your bank account in portions under $10000, the IRS may decide, you are doing it with the intent to avoid having to report the deposit to them and seize all your money — no judge, no jury. The current nominee for Attorney General is particularly infamous for expanding this practice (and for distancing herself from it to win the nomination).

    How soon before the FBI and lesser police start treating use of wired telephones — to eavesdrop on which the police still need these pesky Judiciary's approval — with similar suspicion? Following IRS' example, they might then start prosecuting people simply for making non-cellular calls with the intent to avoid eavesdropping.

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  8. Free Minutes? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Is my device connects to one of these, can I at least get some free minutes or free data? They can even throw in some banner ads.

  9. 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

  10. 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.