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Docs: Responding To Katrina, FBI Made Cell Phone Surveillance Its Priority
v3rgEz writes: There's a lot of lessons that the federal government should have learned in the aftermath of Katrina. Increased domestic surveillance, however, appears to be the one the FBI took to heart, using the natural disaster as a justification for ramping up its use of Stingray cell phone tracking throughout Louisiana after the storm, according to documents released under FOIA to MuckRock.
Never let a crisis go to waste.
Of course the FBI is going to order stuff they think is useful. And they're going to cover it in the usual law and order gloss. Not that I think stingrays are the best way to spend money, but one does assume that organized crime is also going to look at the chaos triggered by the hurricane in order to do more of whatever it is that they usually do. Therefore the FBI needs to be prepared.
And the will likely use cell phones. Hence the stingrays.
If you look closer, you will undoubtedly find that every Federal agency used Katrina as an excuse to order all sorts of useful toys.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Yeah, they do. They feel they are protecting us and doing their patriotic duty to their nation. Go talk to someone who has been indoctrinated in the military or lives inside the beltway and works inside the government, or even just talk to a regular cop.
I have military in laws in my family, one of whom did some kind of SIGINT work for the NSA during the cold war. He's a "God and Country" sort of person; he holds very paternalistic views of the role of government in society. Not only about protecting us against foreign enemies, but also about doing what's best for your country, including obedience to the law.