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The IRS Has Stingray Devices (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The Guardian reports that the use of stingray technology — devices that simulate cell towers in order to gather phone data — is not limited to intelligence agencies and law enforcement. It turns out the Internal Revenue Service owns some of the devices as well. It's unknown how or why the tax agency uses the stingray devices. The only reason The Guardian figured it out was that they happened to see an IRS invoice from when they paid a company to upgrade one of their devices and provide training on its use. It's thought they're being used when the IRS collaborates with other agencies to knock down money laundering operations. "... there are currently between 2,000 and 3,000 "special agents" in the IRS who form the criminal investigation division (CID). They have the ability to get PEN register orders – the only authority needed to use Stingray devices."
I'd think they'd be using them on their own employees, given the shenanigans at the IRS over the past few years.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
We'll see that agencies of all types will have been using these. I can see how the military may feel compelled to switch these on around bases to eavesdrop after the Fort Hood shooting, and the IRS when conducting Department of Treasury-related investigations to bring down Al Capone might need one on a stake out, but these are exceptions rather than daily operations. Are we all really well served by just any government department messing about with communications?
For example, do rail transport officials need to have cell phone eavesdropping to prevent the stealing of valuable cargo because of the latest hot tip? Do the people around airports and sea ports? Ag and Fish people looking for people hunting out of season?
This is the government mind-set of us versus them. Rather than have departments handle things like investigations and smart information sharing, power brokers compartmentalize, see what other agencies have, and then decide they need it for themselves. We have dod/cia/nsa/dia/dhs/atf/doj/local police/state police/city police/etc/etc. Sometimes they play ball and sometimes they don't. When they don't or cant because of inefficiency or ineptness, they just buy what they want and bam, duplicity and overlap arrives and never goes away once it becomes status quo, forever perpetuated and grown as an expense-sink in the budgets. Small government conservatives recognize this insanity (except the douche-bag war hawks who give 'defense' spending a pass since it wins them nationalist 'murica votes). New normal.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
The IRS has a law enforcement group that frequently goes after organized crime. I'd imagine they need to spy on criminal communications as much as anyone.
Aside from wondering whether any agency should have them, I don't know what makes the IRS worthy of note as an operator.
What could possibly go wrong?
You should have nothing to hide, citizen.
If you can read this, it means that I bothered to log in.
with lasers!
Who unanimously and solidly approved the federal government's use of the devices years ago, and even now as they are used against themselves, refuse to back down because they are certain that next election cycle they'll be in charge and will want to be able to use them against those damn dirty liberals.
the use of stingray technology is not limited to intelligence agencies and law enforcement.
there are currently between 2,000 and 3,000 "special agents" in the IRS who form the criminal investigation division (CID).
Does that not count as law enforcement? I mean, yeah, it's tax, so it's not one of the cool crimes, but still.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
are stingrays illegal to purchase? are they difficult to build? this would be an awesome hobby project.
All your freedom is belong to Russia.
Way to sell out your freedom for Security Paranoia, America!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The group that's against a large, invasive federal government somehow supports illegal wiretapping? Going to have to call BS on that one.
The group that's against a large, invasive federal government somehow supports illegal wiretapping? Going to have to call BS on that one.
GP post was sarcasm.
The group that's against a large, invasive federal government somehow supports illegal wiretapping?
The same "group that's against a large, invasive federal government" that loves telling women what they can't do with their bodies? Telling me what herbs I can't smoke? Telling Americans that people of a certain religion should never be President? The only things that group is against are taxes, regulation of industry, and punishment for white collar crime.
FTFY : The IRS is an organized crime that frequently goes after the people who pay for it's existence. I'd imagine they need to spy on criminal communications as much as anyone.
J. Edgar Hoover was head of the FBI, and nobody really wanted to give him more power if they could help it.
A perfectly logical move, come to think of it. Honestly, the federal government is large enough that some police for most of it's branches makes some sense.
Plus, by having each 'police department' in it's own agency, you don't have the problems of them getting distracted all going after pedophiles or something. Good for catching pedophiles, but eventually allowing the polluters, poachers, bank transfer fraudsters, and everybody else 'off the hook' isn't a good outcome either.
I don't read AC A human right
You're confusing the TEA Party with the GOP. They're not the same thing, no matter how much the GOP tries to suggest otherwise.
The group that's against a large, invasive federal government somehow supports illegal wiretapping? Going to have to call BS on that one.
Sorry, but check your history. That same group is responsible for DHS, the TSA, torture, "extraordinary rendition", and of course the absolutely massive spying operations that they only started complaining about when a Democrat was elected president. Republicans pioneered the use of the IRS to go after "enemies" too, but they only complain about it whenever there's a Democrat in office as well, and you never hear them complaining about government overreach when the government is trying to regulate personal behavior they disapprove of.
Now, I'll grant you that your average conservative citizen is probably very much against at least most of those things since most people just want to be left alone, but between their politically two-faced behavior of only complaining about something when the other side does it and failing to check the behavior of those they elected to represent them they do not get a pass in my book.
Conservatives by and large pretend and espouse that all allegedly liberal leaders like a certain maniac control freak pro-establishment senator from California represent honestly and truthfully the views of all liberals everywhere and they try to paint us with all the statist crap these people pull, and yet they'd like us to believe that most of their own leaders don't represent them somehow. That's just more two-faced behavior on their part. Truth is, they're half right--I actually believe that their leaders don't represent their views, just like as a (mostly) liberal person I don't believe alleged liberal leaders represent my views accurately at all.
nt....
"The only things that group is against are taxes, regulation of industry, and punishment for white collar crime."
We're also against criminalizing bacon, which is why today's UN statement means war.
What gets me, at this point, is why would a serious criminal carry a cell phone ?
If you're a serious terrorist or a member of $criminal_organization, carrying a cell phone seems to have more risks than benefits. So why do it ?
The more intelligent folks out there with an agenda aren't going to talk about this over a GD cell phone. They're not going to carry one so you can track their movements.
The government has to know this, so I question who / what their real targets are.
If I were of evil-mind, I would leave my cell phone in some abandoned building with a whole bunch of stuff that goes BOOM to greet the entry team that kicks down the door after tracking the phone.
Or, the not so evil version.
Box the phone up, FedEx that bad boy around the US for a while just to drive people crazy.
The FBI is no longer in the law enforcement business. The FBI is now primarily concerned with 'national security.'
New York Times:
foreignpolicy.com:
The TEA Party didn't even exist back when those things were going on..
I'm sure conservative means different things to different people, but I don't personally know of any that supported the formation of the DHS, the groping of the TSA, nor any of the domestic spying that's been exposed. The Constitution doesn't agree with much of that either. Torture may get some wiggle room, depending on whose definition you go by. You don't truly believe that the entire population of conservatives were completely on board with Dubya, do you? From "Ashcroft's army" to those "free speech zones", there was plenty that both sides could go against.
I get your back and forth point. I think part of it is the lengths the current President went to push "hope and change" and things like transparency. When you push those types of things as hard as he did, people are really going to recoil when they're not achieved. Sort of like "mission accomplished".
Aren't we just supposed to assume that all our shit is being recorded, and *just keep shopping*? I mean, like, what? Is any of this going to make one bit of difference during the elections? Please! The resistance against any of this is so feeble, it does not register anywhere outside the truther sites.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
So other than Ron/Rand Paul, name a congresscritter that is "tea party". Ahh ahh, no cheating. Name one first, then look up their voting history. John Culberson, one of the members of the "Tea Party Caucus" and my own representative for some time, he voted for the PATRIOT ACT every single time. He voted for the Protect America Act, he voted to continue extending telecom immunity for helping the Bush Administration violate the Constitution. Feel free to find something he voted for that reined in the power of federal government to listen and watch everything we do.
"What is your hypothetical administration going to do to end this nonsense of the federal government spying on it's citizens without a warrant when: ,turning the US into a "Surveillance State" where anyone with any level of technical sophistication wants nothing to do with contributing their expertise to the betterment of said society.
1- Historical information shows clearly that incidents of crime and terrorism have not been reduced in a credible way by warrantless wiretapping of citizens.
2- Warrantless wiretapping has lead to trials where the first and fourth amendment rights of the defendants has been largely ignored
3- Evidence collected by warrantless wiretapping of citizens has been used to support charges against said defendants despite their rights being violated.
4- Spying on citizens CLEARLY represents a waste of taxpayer dollars that could be spent on using said resources to fight terrorism.
5- Repeated spying on defendants such as Aaron Schwartz, has lead to situations where the very people who are experts that could contribute to the improvement of the use of surveillance where it is warranted in a fair and lawful way are victimized
And finally:
6- Any credible polling of the American public indicates that constituents of both major political parties clearly DO NOT WANT to live in a surveillance state?"
Ask Donald Trump, Ask Hillary Clinton, ask Bernie Sanders etc.. and watch them stumble and hone and haw or watch them go into some circular non-sequitur argument about "Well I love America and those people who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear and we are trying to prevent 9-11, thats right Nine Eleven! Nine Eleven was bad!" and other tired old clap trap.
The TEA Party is just a branch office of the GOP who have latched onto taxes as a single-issue voting bloc. Go find me a TEA Party candidate who is pro-choice and also opposes warrantless wiretapping, Stingrays, etc.
There are no TEA Party candidates since the TEA Party never managed to become an actual political party. The GOP saw their eminent demise and decided to pretend they were it, and somehow they've been allowed to do so unchallenged.
Why do you think Trump is polling so well? The rotting corpse of the GOP sunk its teeth into the TEA Party. There's no one useful to vote for, so people are choosing to light the whole mess on fire by voting for the one self serving asshole that's at least honest about being a self serving asshole.
Rand is shooting himself in the foot by being such a wimp about taking the speaker role. We don't need someone who's afraid of fighting for something being the leader of our nation. Maybe the exiting speaking can hand him a box of tissues on his way out.
I would have thought, with The Leveson Inquiry and all, that if a newspaper managed to get hold of such a device they'd keep quiet about it.
At the bottom of the
Special agents tap phones in the pursuit of legal cases. Its not that shocking that the IRS has stingrays. The FDA probably has them too. Back in the 80s I had a friend whose phone was tapped by the IRS because he was a manager for an idiot that absconded with the employee withholding and blew that money along with another million or so dollars at a strip club. It took the IRS a while to believe that the business owner really was that big of an idiot and they did a thorough investigation before deciding not to throw him in prison and just garnish his wages till the end of time.
Here's how it goes:
1) Give stingray technology to multiple agencies.
2) Reduce the number of stingrays your agency operates to avoid those pesky congressional investigations AND reduce your yearly operating budget.
3) Get data from other agencies on request.
4) Profit!
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
The TEA Party is just a branch office of the GOP who have latched onto taxes as a single-issue voting bloc. Go find me a TEA Party candidate who is pro-choice and also opposes warrantless wiretapping, Stingrays, etc.
Most Tea Party candidates oppose warrantless wiretapping, Stingrays, etc. In fact, most do not care for the GOP at all (and the GOP wishes that the tea party would go away.)
Pro-choice is a human rights issue for those that believe that a fetus is a life. Regardless of whether you see a fetus that way, for those people, they do believe that the government should prevent what they see as murder.
As much as people would like to argue that being pro-life is simply "the man" trying to control a woman, it is morally much more complicated than that.
The same "group that's against a large, invasive federal government" that loves telling women what they can't do with their bodies?
People keep forgetting that the tea party - or republicans - did not start that fight. The democrats did. And they deliberately included abortion inducing drugs to force the fight. Most social conservatives do not give a shit either way about birth control but do feel strongly against abortion.
Hobby Lobby, who most people like to villainize, always covered birth control for their employees. It was the addition of those abortion pills that they fought against.
Not only has the IRS become the largest welfare agency in the US, it's now being used extensively to spy upon the citizens of the US. The US two-party system has collapsed into a single fascist collaboration.
"If I were not in the CID..."
So when are cell phone comms going to be encrypted? Why should operators like T-mobile and Sprint allow this to continue? AT&T/Verizon are hopelessly corrupt at this point. I only hold out hope where there's some desire for competition.
What can be encrypted using existing technologies and what can't?
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
How bad could it be? Let's see here... We have a now retired head of the IRS who many believe should be indicted for wrong doing against American citizens. We have a justice department who many know does not enforce the rule of law (and constitution) but rather have a penchant for wrongly persecuting innocent American citizens. We have and administration, and their constituents, which seek to dismantle government mechanisms that were put in place to keep the government in check from becoming tyrannical and oppressive. We have a president who bypasses an elected legislative branch when he doesn't get his way. We have activist judges enacting their beliefs rather than the rule of law.
What could possibly go wrong with the IRS possessing stingrays?!??
Is to repeal the 16th Amendment, abolish the IRS and institute the Fair Tax.
Abortion pills? Plan B?
Perhaps because there is no consensus that those drugs induce an "abortion", outside of catholic circles and the folks that insist that it is a person once sperm collides with egg? You're referring to Plan B, are you not? Or did you mean the birth control pill, since some also consider those to be a form of abortion?
The reason that people villainize hobby lobby is that they take the insulting stance of not trusting their own employees to do what is right and moral according to their own morals, and they want to enforce their own religious views upon the private lives of those employees. They don't know that any of their employees are doing any such thing, but they made a big deal about it being even possible, and want to create an option where they can take the power to make those decisions out of the hands of their employees.
Paying for health insurance that also covers abortion and birth control is no more guilt-inducing in the employer than paying your taxes makes the taxpayer guilty of murders committed by the bad apples in our military overseas.
Republicans pioneered the use of the IRS to go after "enemies" too, but they only complain about it whenever there's a Democrat in office as well.
This is a lie, by the way. Nixon tried to use the IRS as his attack dog, but his IRS Commissioner refused the order. It took until Obama for a President to actually surround themselves with enough yes-men to get the job done. Unlike Nixon, Obama actually got the cover up right as well.
It's my understanding that to catch crooks (in this case, the IRS) with a Stingray, you need to set it up near the crooks. It's not a bug that you plant in their phone and give the phone back to them.
The reason that people villainize hobby lobby is that they take the insulting stance of not trusting their own employees to do what is right and moral according to their own morals, and they want to enforce their own religious views upon the private lives of those employees. They don't know that any of their employees are doing any such thing, but they made a big deal about it being even possible, and want to create an option where they can take the power to make those decisions out of the hands of their employees..
Once again, they were paying for birth control pills for employees. And just because something is done "in private" doesn't mean it's right and forcing someone else to pay so that it can "privately" be done is just as wrong.
You are saying that the employee should be able to force their moral views on their employer even though that employee is the one with a choice on whether to even work for that company (Hobby Lobby cannot ask "would you get an abortion" and use that answer as part of their official hiring practice.)
The fact that Hobby Lobby didn't reduce their employees to part time and stop offering insurance (like so many other companies did) shows that they are not just trying to screw the employee.