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Cops Deploy StingRay Anti-Terror Tech Against $50 Chicken-Wing Thief (theregister.co.uk)
An anonymous reader shares a report on The Register: Police in Maryland, U.S., used controversial cellphone-tracking technology intended only for the most serious crimes to track down a man who stole $50 of chicken wings. Police in Annapolis -- an hour's drive from the heart of government in Washington DC -- used a StingRay cell tower simulator in an effort to find the location of a man who had earlier robbed a Pizza Boli employee of 15 chicken wings and three sandwiches. Total worth: $56.77. In that case, according to the police log, a court order was sought and received but in many other cases across the United States, the technology is being used with minimal oversight, despite the fact it is only supposed to be used in the most serious cases such as terrorism.Annapolis police never found the thief.
The real crime here is that 3 sandwiches and 15 wings costs $56.77.
... it is only supposed to be used in the most serious cases such as terrorism....
A law enforcement official once told me that he will use any and all tools that are available to him, regardless of their intended usage.
.
So stories like this no longer surprise me.
So? They had a court order to do it and that is a felony. Of course the "outrageous" story left out a little bit: the guy robbed the employee using a handgun. Oh wait, that is a bit less outrageous. Anything for clicks though! Good job Slashdot.
[QUOTE]15 chicken wings and three sandwiches. Total worth: $56.77. [/QUOTE]
^ These are the real criminals.
If police are spending lots of money on stingray devices, shouldn't they use them to track down enough criminals to justify the expense? Also, if the individual really did commit the crime, isn't it fair for the police to track him and apprehend him?
I suspect I'll get downmodded to -1 so people can avoid the questions and pretend like they're not here. Can anyone actually answer the questions rather than evading them through moderation? I don't think Slashdot is capable of giving good answers.
Even assuming $1.50 per wing (which is almost gouging at that point, $1 is much more reasonable) that's $22.50. Those must be some damn good sandwiches at over $10 a pop
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Any "tool" of surveillance or coercion provided to a law enforcement agency, on the pretext that it is necessary in extraordinary circumstances, will be soon employed in routine circumstances.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
They may take our freedom, but they will never take our chicken wings! Well, except in this case where cops and criminals worked together to take them both.
When all you have is military grade signals intelligence gear; everything looks like a nail, right?
I'm OK with great transparency of the citizens to the police, if they get warrants. As long as there's great transparency of the police to the citizens, if we make polite requests to know exactly where they were and what they were saying every minute they were on the clock.
They should be bugged all the time and the data available for retroactive viewing. That's harsh - I'd hate it on my job - but policing is a very high calling and they carry deadly weapons in our name...and, oh, yeah, they have the power to surveill any of us on request now, because our lives are computer-mediated and they've reserved the right to access all those records that didn't use to even exist.
That's given them vastly expanded powers to do their job (for us! hooray! This wing-bandit was caught and his stupid gun taken away! Yay!) but power breeds trouble and it justifies an enhanced surveillance...of the police. Sorry guys.
Yeah, but a couple of them found out their spouses were out on the town. Please... who are they really tracking?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The summary says he was a "chicken wing thief", but the story says he "robbed" the employee. Theft and robbery are different, for good reason. Stealing property is nonviolent. Robbing someone of property (i.e. taking it from a person by force or threat of force) is a violent crime. When someone sticks gun in your face and demands that you hand over the goods, it doesn't make much difference if the goods are chicken wings or jewelry, does it? Without more information about what this guy actually did to forcibly acquire those chicken wings, it's not very reasonable to conclude that this should have been a low priority case and the cops went overboard. Was he armed? Did he really threaten force? Did he assault the guy? TFA does not answer the real questions.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
You mad this isn't a safe space?
https://youtu.be/BM0Jjw421rA
it must be tough, being the only fair, rational, objective human on the planet. maybe you should just kill yourself.
Gov: Charge the Ion Cannons!!!
That must be one BIG chicken!
logical arguments should be rigorous. slippery slope arguments are 'well often times X means Y, so in this case X means Y also'
it's pretty much the same reason why we frown on racial stereotypes or profiling, gender discrimination, or anything of that sort.
I know you insert this kind of trolling on nearly every post, but I have to wonder if you are even aware that you have, in fact, fulfilled your own racist prophecy.
Had your attempt at humor actually found its mark and been a remotely creative or even slightly-clever jibe, we might think differently of you.
If we waited to use this kind of technology for the next 9/11 style attack then how do you even know that it works? Testing? Sure lets trust that it works in the perfect ideal test scenario. From my perspective it's more interesting that this tech was used in a real world condition against a relativity easy target to track, and failed. If it failed against this one guy, it'll have a good chance at failing in a more serious condition where the target is actively avoiding the system. If the failure really was due to the system being inept then maybe it should be scrapped, not because it's 'unethical', but because it doesn't really work causing us to rely on it in a serious scenario where it wont work.
Yes, the proceeds of the robbery was only food, but this guy seem dangerous enough to use this technology under court order.
I'm not surprised, this is Maryland we're talking about.
Source: I live here.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
everything looks like human skulls.
...is to design cellular protocols that make it technically impossible. Even if legislation were to pass tomorrow making them illegal the gov would continue using them for the so-called 'extreme' circumstances. 'Stingrays' are a classing MITM attack and could be prevented using certificates and a chain of trust in much the same way as we use on the internet.
It shocks me that I've become so desensitized to abuses of power that this sort of thing doesn't even rate a "meh" any longer. I'm more apt to pay attention when someone DOESN'T abuse power.
How sad is that?
If he'd controlled the gun with an app, it would be disruptive and we'd all be OK with it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I remember back in the day, the Patriot Act - designed to protect us against terrorism. It's first official public use was to bust a corrupt politician and strip club owner in San Diego. These tools, only for use in the most exigent of circumstances ALWAYS find their way down to low level investigations.
Outrage at the top, then by the end, you see that a warrant was issued, and the tracking totally legit. Some people still support enforcing laws against theft.
Have the chicken wings been safely recovered and repatriated to their rightful owner?
Car robberies are probably way less frequent than car theft. Not the same thing.
The crime was armed robbery, where the criminal pointed a loaded handgun at a human being and threatened to kill them if they did not give up their property. That's what makes this a serious crime - the threat of imminent death. It is completely legal to respond to an armed robbery by basically summarily gunning down the robber without warning.
And the cost of court / jail / cops time will be like X10-X2000 more then what was stolen.
What's worse ... the fact they used the technology for a seemingly petty crime .... ... or the fact that despite using the technology, the guy got away anyhow.
I wonder what they were REALLY looking for ....
"When you gotta shoot, SHOOT! Don't talk." Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez
Chicken wings are extremely overpriced for what they are.
That is the real crime. It either means:
1) The tech doesn't work.
2) They had the wrong phone number - which most likely means they hassled some innocent man.
3) A guy that stole $50 was smart enough to beat their technology.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
That they failed to catch the thief shows that they need more live practice with the technology, and that cases like this are perfect test grounds.
Clearly they need to use it on all cases until they are getting 100% success,
because you would hate for an actual terrorist to get away if they had a real case to use it on.
The above is all sarcasm.
"despite the fact it is only supposed to be used in the most serious cases such as terrorism" Did anybody actually believe that would be the case? Chortle
I would assume that if the stinkray is processing my calls or barfing its bit on the network, that the network would not function as well. I can't see some crappy box in the back of a police van doing a very good job. So, ignoring all the privacy issues, would this device not be degrading the entire network for everyone else?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Thief stole food.
Food was chicken wings.
Stringrays have wings.
Use stringray to catch thief.
It's not the $50. It's what this portends in terms of a breakdown of the whole rotten, corrupt system. It's like the point made by Yevgraf in recollecting the time he found Doctor Zhivago pilfering firewood for subsistence by tearing down pieces of a fence.
"I told myself it was beneath my dignity to arrest a man for pilfering firewood. But nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man, and the party was right: One man desperate for a bit of fuel is pathetic. Five million people desperate for fuel will destroy a city."
If open resistance and rebellion breaks out against the system, it will be an explosive flashpoint followed by hell on earth. This is about keeping the lid tamped down and kicking the can further down the road. No one sucking off the tit of the system, and that is an awful lot of us, wants to be around for that. Everyone knows it's coming. We all know the system can't be sustained; not without a lot of fundamental change. We're afraid to face the music. We don't want to bite the bullet because we know our teeth will shatter if we do.
Were the Russian people ultimately better served by dragging out the dissolution of the system for 75 years, rather than straightening things out right in the beginning after the October Revolution? Who knows. I just know there was one hell of a lot of human tragedy in the interrim.
Wonder how many lawyers are going to line up, with "discovery" motions to get a look at it. (How are you sure that it was "my" client you tracked...)
Typical of government to overspend on unnecessarily complex solutions.
In which universe are fifteen chicken wings and three sandwiches 'worth' $56 ?
Perhaps in a universe where a monetary threshold dictates the type of acceptable police response?
Requiem for the American Dream