FCC Complaint: Baltimore Police Breaking Law With Use of Stingray Phone Trackers (baltimoresun.com)

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Baltimore Sun: Civil rights groups have complained to the FCC over the Baltimore Police Department's use of stingray phone tracking devices. They claim that "the way police use it interferes with emergency calls and is racially discriminatory." Baltimore Sun reports: "The complaint argues that the police department doesn't have a proper license to use the devices and is in violation of federal law. It calls on regulators at the Federal Communications Commission to step in and formally remind law enforcement agencies of the rules. 'The public is relying on the Commission to carry out its statutory obligation to do so, to fulfill its public commitment to do so, and to put an end to widespread network interference caused by rampant unlicensed transmissions made by BPD and other departments around the country,' the groups say in the complaint. Police in Baltimore acknowledged in court last year that they had used the devices thousands of times to investigate crimes ranging from violent attacks to the theft of cellphones. Investigators had been concealing the technology from judges and defense lawyers and after the revelations Maryland's second highest court ruled that police should get a warrant before using a Stingray. The groups argue that surveillance using the devices also undermines people's free speech rights and describe the use of Stingrays as an electronic form of the intrusive police practices described in the scathing Justice Department report on the police department's pattern of civil rights violations."

Comments

Racially discrimitory?

[Anonymous Coward]

This device can determine race when scanning phone calls?

Re:Racially discrimitory?

[Anonymous Coward]

The don't have to... they're used disproportionately in black neighborhoods. It's right in TFA had you bothered to read it.

Re:Racially discrimitory?

[sjames]

No, but police can deploy it where it will mostly interfere with minorities.

Re:Racially discrimitory?

[Anonymous Coward]

they're used disproportionately in black neighborhoods.

And? There are millions of other reasons for that that don't indicate racial discrimination.

It's right in TFA had you bothered to read it.

RTFA? Where do you think you are, someplace other than slashdot?

Re: Racially discrimitory?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, but repeated incidence of this is profiling by definition.

Re:Racially discrimitory?

[tsotha]

... which also happen to be the neighborhoods with the highest crime rates. Do you think having cops allocate more resources to neighborhoods with higher crime rates is a bad idea? Sounds like Law Enforcement 101 to me.

Re: Racially discrimitory?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they keep letting repeat-offense crooks (who reside/operate in those neighborhoods) go after their sentences are up, and they go back to the same place... just what the fuck do you expect? Is it profiling or are the inhabitants of that area contributing to (or complacent/fearful of those who are contributing to) the stereotype and attracting attention upon themselves? Keeping a closer eye/ear on a bad area is just the smart thing to do. It's the same reason why more patrol cars are there compared to quiet neighborhoods. Quiet neighborhoods don't have a bunch of known maniacs running around day and night and nobody would put up with one living in their midst.

criminal != victim

(criminal && being_watched) != victim

Innocent people who can't afford to leave bad areas are the victims. The problem is criminals claim innocence too, and some people who seem innocent are criminals who've been luck enough not to get caught. Picking out truly innocent people is hard and acting tough and lashing out when they check you out is a red flag. Stupid people don't get that and apologists are enablers.

Re: Racially discrimitory?

[beelsebob]

The problem is in your first statement.

Being a criminal, does not imply that you are not a victim. It's entirely possible (and in fact common) for the police to victimise someone who is a criminal. Further, it's entirely possible for someone who has been victimised by the police, to feel that the world is out to get them (because it is), and become a criminal.

Re: Racially discrimitory?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they keep letting repeat-offense crooks (who reside/operate in those neighborhoods) go after their sentences are up, and they go back to the same place... just what the fuck do you expect?

The problem with this is that whenever a crime is committed the police typically looks at people that are have a criminal record.
This leads to a situation where you have a list of suspects based on previous crimes rather than any real evidence pointing in their direction.
Convince a witness to pick out the one that looks the most like the real perpetrator and suddenly you have a case, especially if you sorted out the ones without an alibi beforehand.
It is easy to create repeat-offense crooks if you want to, after all you already know that there is something wrong with them. Meanwhile the real perpetrator goes free.
This occurs on a regular basis because there is a culture among police officers to "be able to tell a good person from a bad person". They have a gut feeling that tells them who the bad person is. Now they only need to nail him for something.

Re:Racially discrimitory?

[Aighearach]

This device can determine race when scanning phone calls?

Watch out, they're coming for the Derps next! You thought you were safe?!

Re: Racially discrimitory?

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds me of that old saying that everyone has a skeleton in their closet. I imagine it's trivial to find SOMETHING illegal.

Re:Racially discrimitory?

[Coren22]

You do realise that Baltimore is mostly black neighborhoods don't you? Also, the highest crime areas (you know, the areas we tell our kids not to wander to?) are black.

I would expect the police to be using tools to catch criminals in the high crime areas, wouldn't you?

Perhaps if you lived in Maryland you would understand.

Re:Racially discrimitory?

[Anonymous Coward]

#BlackCallsMatter (but nobody else)

Re: Racially discrimitory?

[Anonymous Coward]

First off you have to analyze what a "repeat-offense crook" is, mostly you're talking about the poor. The poor (at least in cities) tend to to be minorities. The well off, which often tend to be white, probably commit just as much if not more crime (fraud, market manipulation, etc) but are not targeted nearly as much because they have resources (money, lawyers, education, connections) with which to defend themselves. So what you get is a disproportionate allocation of resources to tackle crimes committed by the poor (selling DVDs/cigarettes on a corner, low level drug crimes, failure to pay fines, etc) while the crimes seriously effecting society (identity theft, predatory lending, embezzlement, etc) go comparatively unpunished. That's not to say that crimes (or at least the ones with actual victims) committed in poor communities shouldn't be punished, but the allocation of resources (harsh punishments, disproportionate amounts of personnel and time, focus of legal efforts, etc) makes no sense from an independent perspective.

Re: Racially discrimitory?

[Anonymous Coward]

" I imagine it's trivial to find SOMETHING illegal."

Its gotten so commonplace that people have written books about it. Given how complex the law is and how broadly laws are written these days your average person probably commits multiple felonies PER DAY. People have literally been arrested for "crimes" such as standing on a sidewalk, asking an officer "why" and being parked in an empty public parking lot (well they were repeatedly threatened with arrest if they continued to "talk back" IE asking why the officer was harassing them for the former)

http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-you-commit-three-felonies-a-day-2009-9

Re: Racially discrimitory?

[stoatwblr]

or "collect the usual suspects"

Re:Racially discrimitory?

[stoatwblr]

"Also, the highest crime areas (you know, the areas we tell our kids not to wander to?) are black."

No, the highest crime areas (anywhere in the world) are poor. Skin colour doesn't enter into that part.

If you start looking into the reasons why disproportionate ratios of the black population are poor then it's easy to see the systemic discrimination across the board which shows the Jim Crow laws might be gone, but Jim Crow attitudes still lurk just under the surface.

Re: Racially discrimitory?

[Hylandr]

This leads to a situation where you have a list of suspects based on previous crimes rather than any real evidence pointing in their direction.

And 9 times out of 10 they are correct.

I imagine it's trivial to find SOMETHING illegal.

Parole / Probation means they are supposed to be developing a habit of making good decisions. They are closely scrutinized to make sure that happens and yes, strict compliance is 100% mandatory. ~ Deal with it. ~

People have literally been arrested for "crimes" such as standing on a sidewalk, asking an officer "why" and being parked in an empty public parking lot

Officers lives are hard enough without baiting little pricks that do this. They deserve what they get.

Criminal status is not a race.

[Hylandr]

Criminal status is not a race, EMF doesn't send or receive better based on the color of your skin.

Unless you're holding it wrong.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[sjames]

Unless you use it primarily in minority neighborhoods.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[mcl630]

Stringray is used mostly in minority neighborhoods (at least according to the complaint) and doesn't just affect the criminal targeted. Everybody in the neighborhood loses data service and has calls blocked or dropped, including 911 calls.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[Hylandr]

Lets just give it up and acknowledge the race card has been overused and no longer holds any merit.

We don't know if it's being used in rich as well as poor neighborhoods because we have no arrest statistics where those tools were allegedly used. Chances are the individuals in the well-to-do neighborhoods ( including minorities that live in those neighborhoods ) aren't getting mad because they aren't doing anything to get themselves in trouble.

It's not right that the Police aren't following the law themselves if the accusation turns out to be accurate. But I think the real rub here is the people getting caught are getting mad, and they happen to live in the less than well off neighborhoods.

People who make bad decisions have a tendency to blame the people that catch them making bad decisions. People that don't make bad decisions have a tendency to not show up on a police blotter.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[DNS-and-BIND]

It's used there because that's where most of the crime is. Where else would they use it? Allocating scarce resources to areas where crimes aren't happening is a waste of taxpayer money. Would the city put homeless shelters where there aren't many homeless people? Would they put needle exchange programs where there aren't any drug addicts? Same thing.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[Tokolosh]

It is entirely conceivable that if the Stingrays and police were deployed in white neighborhoods and businesses, that most of the crime would be suddenly discovered there.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you fucking kidding me? Do you honestly fucking believe that there is more crime in black neighborhoods because that's where the police are and not vice-versa. Really? You're that fucking stupid?

"It's entirely conceivable" only if you live in some kind of alternate fucking reality where the inner-cities aren't war zones on the level of Baghdad. I'm not saying that there aren't issues with the police or there aren't things that screw the black community over as a whole, but if you honestly think there is the same level of crime in suburban white subdivision as there is in an inner-city ghetto, go jump off a motherfucking bridge you disingenuous piece of fucking shit.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel you don't understand how policing works. "Entirely conceivable"? These days there are heat maps for this sort of thing. You figure out where all the crime is coming from and deploy your resources there. Unfortunately, when you overlay the maps of "where crimes happen" and "where black people live" there is a big overlap. This even happens when Section 8 disperses the population to suburbs. Go to fbi.gov and look at their crime stats by race. It's depressing.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[Anonymous Coward]

Some men you just can't reach. These assholes would be crying racism if a police officer was trying to stop a feral "teenager" from raping them in the ass with a broken broomstick.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[haruchai]

"Lets just give it up and acknowledge the race card has been overused and no longer holds any merit"

Let's not. Even if it appears that way *in some cases*, the cops have been mistreating minorities to a greater degree for a long time and it's not improved much.

The stop-and-frisk reports from the NYPD during the Bloomberg years shows that clearly.
http://www.nyclu.org/content/s...

The recent DOJ report on the Baltimore PD is even more damning and backs up what black residents have been complaining about for DECADES as well as what former Baltimore cop and ex-Marine Michael Wood has been saying for years about police culture and behavior.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[haruchai]

It occurs to me that if the authorities had been deploying Stingrays around Wall St and other financial districts, not only would they have found plenty of mostly-white criminals, they might have saved a grateful country from huge losses in money & jobs.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[AK Marc]

But I think the real rub here is the people getting caught are getting mad, and they happen to live in the less than well off neighborhoods.

That's a good argument for integration. Segregation by SES doesn't work. It just makes things worse, and the US has never integrated.Ghettos by law, then by convention, then by coercion. We are still in ghetto by coercion. If we ever moved to an integrated society, we'd cut crime in half.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[sjames]

People living there who haven't done anything to be caught for are a bit tired of being go-to suspects as well.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[wierd_w]

I would argue otherwise.

When the racecard is used, you get absurd things attributed to racism.

Eg, we can say that white people outnumber black people 10:1. (For the sake of this example, just pretend this is true.) This means that if the rate of incidence in desire for gourmet coffee is identical in both races, 10x as many white people will show up at the coffee shop as black people. that means the likelihood that the first person in line is at least 10x more likely to be white than black. It has nothing to do with preferential treatment, it is just how the odds line up. A black patron visits the shop, and is more likely to wait in line behind a white person, than a white person is to wait in line behind a black person, simply because there are more white people.

When the racecard is presented as an option, THEN there is real, defacto racism involved, because now you are introducing real preferential treatment for the black patron to shorten their waiting times, based only on their skin color, out of some misguided idea that the wait times should be equal.

That causes a grudge to happen, which causes race hatred.

Nearly all of the problem with racism, and perceptions of racism that really arent, can be solved through better understanding, and by that, I do not mean the touchy Feely kind.

If i take a vacation to zimbabwe, i expect that i will wait in line behind lots of people with dark colored skin, because there are more people with dark skin than light skin there, and they got there first. It does not mean the supermarket owners are racist against whites, and i do not feel obliged to cut in line so my wait times are different from the people behind me at the checkout, just because my skin color is different.

Arguments about how some minority ethnicity suffer so terribly because they statistically have to wait behind majority ethnicities, ignores the truth: there are just a bunch of people standing in the line, and the only way it matters what race they are, is when race is MADE into an issue. When a line is statistically N persons long, the average is that you be in the middle of the line somewhere. You wait just as long if the line is made of white people as black people.

The question is not about how terrible it is that black people are typically served after white people-- it is why the black patrons find this offensive, when it is not actually the consequence of racism, and why they feel entitled to being treated priority based solely on the color of thier skin.

The race card makes this peoblem worse, not better.

Just wait in fucking line, and wait your turn, like everyone else.

In regards to the story at hand, the presumption of racism comes from some simple features:

Incarceration rates for black males is vastly higher than for white males.

Predominantly black neighborhoods tend to be lower income than predominantly white neighborhoods.

Lower income populations tend towards higher rates of criminality and recidivism.

Lower incomes are strongly correllated with lower educational achievement.

And if I may, a subjective observation: there is a difference of opinion concerning the value of education between mainstream black culture, and mainstream white culture.

I would therefore conjecture that the income disparity is not defacto racism, but is instead cultural. (Take the same culture and apply it to a different race, you will get the same result.) The income disparity results from the attitude toward education, which adversely affects earning potential, which adversely affects crime rate.

Are these cops being racist, by putting stingrays in black neighborhoods, or are the cops putting stingrays where the highest incidence of crime is, and circumstances just so happen to be that such areas are mostly black?

To me, the line is drawn on motivation. Is the motive this?

Black people commit the most crimes, so we deploy stingrays in heavilh black populated areas.

Because that is racism-- it

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[tsotha]

The stop-and-frisk reports from the NYPD during the Bloomberg years shows that clearly.

What stop-and-frisk reports show is black people tend to live in neighborhoods with more crime. Spinning that into "proof" of racism is exactly what he's talking about.

And nothing, nothing out of this administration should be taken at face value when it touches on race.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[tsotha]

Yes, that's entirely conceivable in the same way wet streets cause rain.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[wierd_w]

I say get rid of both.

Get rid of the race card.
Get rid of racist policing.

Keeping either one, as an excuse of the other, is absurd.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[Hylandr]

Stated much more eloquently than I.

Thank You.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[Hylandr]

This guy said it better.

https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...

Mod points aren't for obfuscating the truth you don't like.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying my neighborhood is littered with dead bodies, the vacant spaces of since stolen cars, burglarized homes and dilapidated buildings turned crack houses? But that we'd only be able to notice any of those things if police were snooping around?

Fascinating.

Have you considered medication for your psychosis?

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[haruchai]

"And nothing, nothing out of this administration should be taken at face value when it touches on race"

  That's been very true of a great number of police departments. Sadly, it remains true to this day.
  And you need to extend your skepticism to administrations other than merely the current one.

Please include the notable figures that talk about "blah" people and say things about the President such as "we know the candidate Barack Obama, what he was like – the anti-war government nig er, America, uh, was a source for division around the world, that what we were doing was wrong"

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[haruchai]

The problem is that too many think the race card is played anytime anyone complains about being discriminated or mistreated *because* of their race, even if it may well be perfectly legitimate.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[wierd_w]

Complaints about racial discriminiation need to be taken seriously, but on the flipside, not everything that "feels" like racism actually is.

I posted earlier up, a pretty long explanation about what i mean by this. Sometimes, naked, raw ststistics present situations that "look" like discrimination, but really aren't.

Like standing in line at the checkout.

It is very easy to feel you are being discriminated against, when you are black, and nearly every single time you go to the store, the person at the front of the line is white.

You actually have to rationalize why the liklihood of this happening is so much higher than finding a black person at the front of the line, especially when the store is genuinely representative of the total population demographic, and not just a local demographic. White people outnumber black people in the US. Just this fact alone makes the probability that they will be in line ahead of you significantly higher. The checkout clerk is not telling black people to go to the back. They are cashing people out in the order they arrived in the line. Yet, every time you get there, sure enough, there's a white person ahead of you in line.

It feels like racism, but isnt.
People that don't stop to thint about why this always happens will instinctively latch on to the idea that they are being discriminated against. They will make complaints about discrimination, a proper investigation will find that there us none, and now you have somebody that feels abandoned by the system, on top of feeling discriminated against, when in fact, no such thing has happened.

The race card makes these people feel better, but it does so through instituting REAL racism, and further, adds a sense of legitimacy to these percieved but not actual forms of discrimination.

The solution is better understanding of the circumstances behind their experiences, not trying to fight false racism with real racism.

Re: Criminal status is not a race.

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't matter if it's racist, it's against the law for them to be using these devices without a warrant in the first place.

Re: Criminal status is not a race.

[wierd_w]

That's another point entirely, and one I wholly agree on.

Re: Criminal status is not a race.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. Look at how it's always the White Guy's fault. A community creates crooks? Blame whitey. Illegal aliens don't get paid as well as citizens and legal residents? Blame Whitey. Government is only giving you enough taxpayer money to cover medical bills, rent, cell phone and cable bills? Blame Whitey.

Fix your own culture.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[ProzacPatient]

There is no such thing as race anyway; we're all members of the same exact species. The idea of race is an entirely learned idea and if you watch little kids play you'll notice that they are not naturally prejudice against others who are superficially different unless they've been told to be prejudice.

Variety makes the world more interesting and people themselves are no exception.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[budgenator]

If 20% of the population is committing 50% of the crime, is enhanced enforcement in minority communities really racism or is it effective asset allocation? If your part of the majority of the minority community members being preyed upon by a minority of gangbanger scum, your really caught between a rock and a hard place.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[Anonymous Coward]

I use glasses. When I got to the supermarket, there is nearly always someone without glasses in front of me. This is discrimination of people who wear glasses.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[liquid_schwartz]

I love your logic and analogies. Unfortunately the people likely to play the race card have a severe allergy to facts and quite simply cannot reason well so while I can see your point they will dismiss it with vague accusations (white privilege and such). Racism has reached a 30 year high under Obama.

I still stand by my personal theory that the media is deliberately agitating everyone as a response to we are the 99%. Divide and conquer is alive and well.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[liquid_schwartz]

Then they should be mad at their neighbors who disproportionately commit many crimes. Why are young black males so often targeted by police? Perhaps it's because they commit a shockingly high number of crimes. While the US is known to have high crime rates what is less known is that if you subtract out the number of crimes that black people commit our crime rates resemble Europe.

If you want to change the stereotype then instead of complaining about racism how about not living up to the stereotype.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because unlike your delusions, the police actually use the tools for a specific reason, not a dragnet. Further, most white collar crime committed on Wall Street is in the jurisdiction of the FBI and Secret Service, not the city cops. And, you know exactly who they work for and who bought their next boss.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[Coren22]

http://baltimore.areaconnect.c...

Baltimore is also 64% black...so I would expect the police to use the Stingrays in predominately black neighborhoods more often.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't have done any good, bankers are untouchable. We know there was a ton of fraud in the 2008 financial crisis, but prosecutors didn't bother to prosecute more than a few people because:

Any narrative of how we got to this point has to start with the so-called Holder Doctrine, a June 1999 memorandum written by the then–deputy attorney general warning of the dangers of prosecuting big banks—a variant of the “too big to fail” argument that has since become so familiar. Holder’s memo asserted that “collateral consequences” from prosecutions—including corporate instability or collapse—should be taken into account when deciding whether to prosecute a big financial institution. That sentiment was echoed as late as 2012 by Lanny Breuer, then the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, who said in a speech at the New York City Bar Association that he felt it was his duty to consider the health of the company, the industry, and the markets in deciding whether or not to file charges.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[Anonymous Coward]

if you watch little kids play you'll notice that they are not naturally prejudice against others who are superficially different...

Oh yes they are. It does appear that a slightly darker/lighter shade of skin isn't significant enough to trigger this prejudice, but try and integrate a kid with neon blue skin and see how well the other kids treat them.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you expect people to whip themselves into a frenzy every time the TV says that somebody across the country did something racist?

Interesting how, now that the Concerned Parents of the world have to work to support their families, it's the mysteriously-unemployed Gender Studies majors who start all the moral panics...

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[haruchai]

I know about as much about financials as the typical banker knows about IT but I also know that greed is a disease and that "too big to fail", left unchecked, will soon become "so much too much bigger to fail" - and when *that* blows up, we in NorthAm will be envious of the situation in Greece.

Re:Criminal status is not a race.

[Dread_ed]

My grandfather was a racist by some metrics: he used the "N" word on occasion, he had a country accent, he told the occasional off color joke about race or foreigners, he was from the deep South. And, of course, he was white, the most damning of traits to some.

He also told all of his grandchildren that if our government forced intermarrying between races our country would be drastically better off in three generations. He encouraged us to take matters into our own hands on this front.

Sometimes I envision a day when the people of the US have through reproduction thoroughly eradicated the gross physical traits that humans identify as race. I like to imagine what our world would look like without race as a dividing factor. When no one is claiming harm to their ancestors, when no one is feeling guilty about what their ancestors did, because they all share the same ancestors. What would that open up as a possibility?

Call him a racist if you want, but grandpa was a conscientious and intelligent old racist.

Biggest gang in Baltimore

[Anonymous Coward]

Baltimore PD is Baltimore's largest organized crime ring.

Re:Biggest gang in Baltimore

[Anonymous Coward]

Chicago FBI brings in far more drugs and kills many more Americans than any Baltimore this/that/other.

Check out their crib on a non-FBI site: http://www.higginsdevelopment.com/projects/office/fbi-chicago

Now tell Slashdot readers why we need this fucking shit again. To push more child porn?
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/01/28/how-the-fbi-became-the-worlds-largest-distributor-of-child-sex-abuse-imagery/

Those G-men spend all of American tax payers money just to drug the country and kill people like Ian Murdock of Debian. My vote is they fuck off.

Re:Biggest gang in Baltimore

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the big spooky labels on movies scaring kids? Huge logos saving America from what? DVD's?

They don't work for the American people, they are paid by the Americans but do the work of Jewish media and US politicians. Look at the economy right now and tell me the FBI helped America in any way.

http://www.dumbwarnings.com/

Re:Biggest gang in Baltimore

[Anonymous Coward]

Download your entertainment and stop paying the actual media from pumping the terror. That would be an improvement. Look at the cable and news monopolies. Look at the Federal Reserve. Look at 9/11. What about all that stuff? We get Baltimore PD news from a year ago on FBI News slashdot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molon_labe

Re:Biggest gang in Baltimore

[Anonymous Coward]

FBI sold out America for a paycheck that isn't even worth anything any more. They didn't even protect the currency. Get OUT!

Breaking the Law

[goombah99]

There I was racially discriminating, in the hood down town
all inside it's so incriminating picking phones to own
feel as though nobody can avoid my prying eye
so I might as well begin to put some action in my life
Breaking the law, breaking the law
Breaking the law, breaking the law
Breaking the law, breaking the law
Breaking the law, breaking the law

FBI? GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER TYRONE.

[Anonymous Coward]

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/08/24/0049246/in-baltimore-and-elsewhere-police-use-stingrays-for-petty-crimes

How far back we gotta go? Back to the days when FBI wasn't directing Slashdot?

Check this out too guys! Nintendo May Retire Game Boy Name
https://games.slashdot.org/story/07/07/17/203236/nintendo-may-retire-game-boy-name

Maybe FBI just retire?

Re:FBI? GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER TYRONE.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can tell the FBI assigned to Slashdot have no clue how stupid they sound trying to fit in with Slashdotters.

Maybe wait tables instead?

Re:FBI? GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER TYRONE.

[Anonymous Coward]

July 17, 2007 @03:57PM from the game-over-man dept

pretty much.

Re:Whatevs

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't exactly call the Baltimore PD "fucking retarded, wild animals", but they do need to be - in your words - "tamed", like all racist knuckleheads.

Mass Firings In Order?

[IonOtter]

It's becoming more and more clear, that Baltimore is going to require a truly massive purge of it's law enforcement ranks. Not just slaps on the wrist, or re-training, but a flat-out "You're fired, and law enforcement credentials revoked" kind of thing.

There won't be any mass riots or anything like that. Those happen because the firings haven't happened when they should.

If anything, it'll become the most peaceful, most pleasant city to live in, until a fresh crop of high-IQ, college-graduates can be convinced to take the job.

Re:Mass Firings In Order?

[sexconker]

Don't forget to strip them of their pensions and throw them in prison for the crimes committed, as well as allowing them to be held individually liable in any civil suit.

Re:Mass Firings In Order?

[DNS-and-BIND]

It's very disturbing you went right for a word loaded with historical baggage like "purge". That sort of thing has a very dark history and suggesting the same tactics be used on people you don't like is worrisome indeed.

I thought IQ tests didn't work and only produced invalid results? Besides, if intelligent people are so intelligent, why don't they just sandbag the test so the results come back at average?

Intelligent people do poorly at tasks requiring a lot of repetition and lack of novel stimulus. Average intelligence people can work on an assembly line doing the same task for twelve hours a day without batting an eye. The same job would drive a high intelligence person batty with the lack of novelty.

Re:Mass Firings In Order?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you expect from communists? They think they're in charge now because they've gotten the weak-minded college morons on Facebook and Twitter eating out of their hands, but here in real life people who can think and have common sense are still the majority. Of course they want to "purge" anyone who can see straight through their SJW bullshit.

I wish all these keyboard commies would go live in a fucking project or ghetto in Chicago or Philly or DC for a few months then come back and tell me the police are the problem. Not to say that they don't have issues, but I doubt any of these limp-dicked reds would be calling for purging anything, they'd be down on their knees sucking the cops to protect their lilywhite asses from the thugs who want to rape, rob, and murder them without a second thought.

Re:Mass Firings In Order?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha Baltimore? Peaceful? Maybe for the thugs until they decide that their corner is being infringed upon by the thug next door...then pop pop.

Re:Mass Firings In Order?

[Anonymous Coward]

"There won't be any mass riots or anything like that. Those happen because the firings haven't happened when they should."

Wrong. Those happen because some people are animals that are waiting for the opportunity to fuck shit up and steal stuff. Don't act like there's a noble cause for recent rioting.

Re:Mass Firings In Order?

[Anonymous Coward]

Intelligent people do poorly at tasks requiring a lot of repetition and lack of novel stimulus.

Yes, they do. Very well demonstrated by you and most of your posts here on Slashdot. I mean, you are obviously fairly intelligent, being able to write using proper spelling and grammar. And at the same time, you do so poorly with the actual content and messages you try to convey, but fail so miserably at.

Re:Mass Firings In Order?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, one thing that might work is to implement a "two wrongs doesn't make one right" system.
Make evidence gathered by illegal means admissible in court, but prosecute those illegal means as a separate crime.

The use of a stingray should not be considered in the context of law enforcement but rather as a completely separate case as if a civilian used them. After all the police officer weren't allowed to use them as part of his duty.

Hefty Fines

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that the fine for unlicensed transmission is $10,000/day.

Why Do These Things Even Work?

[sexconker]

Why is my phone connecting to random towers all the damned time?

My phone should come with a list of certificates it trusts and should only connect to trusted towers.
I should be able to edit this list as the owner of the phone.
I should be able to accept updates to this list from my carrier (or any carrier of my choice), either as automatically and insecurely as I want (leaving "Auto" checked on the phone, or as carefully as I want (walk into the carrier's HQ and ask for a paper list of cert fingerprints for their towers and the towers of their partners).

I should be alerted whenever a new tower claiming to be a tower of my chosen carrier(s) is detected with an unmatched cert before my phone connects to it. I could then decide to blacklist it, check for an update that includes it so I can confidently add it, or just add it blindly and roll the dice.

Re:Why Do These Things Even Work?

[WolfgangVL]

That's a damn fine idea. I recall the blackphone does something akin to this as far as alerting the user when the phone detects that a tower has something....amiss in it configuration. Please implement and open source with haste, lest somebody takes this great idea to field and patents the idea from under you.

Re: Why Do These Things Even Work?

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound like you think you own your phone or something.

Re:Why Do These Things Even Work?

[Anonymous Coward]

My phone should come with a list of certificates it trusts and should only connect to trusted towers.

While that's a grand idea, it would never work in the corrupt world we currently find ourselves. Peeping cops would simply get a court order demanding that the carriers give them a valid certificate and add their stingray to the list of valid towers.

Re:Why Do These Things Even Work?

[AHuxley]

Its from the early days of towers and moving a cell phone around, the handoff between towers has to be very, very cheap, easy to bill, be totally scalable and telco trusted.
All a telco device expected was lots of cell towers to select from. The users voice was consumer encrypted to a weak early standard so that part was secure from consumer recording in the wild.
That is where the early mil systems got in. The tower hand over was a telco weakness and allowed the take over of a users phone.
Years later the tool set is so cheap that any US city, state, parish, state task force with federal funding can afford to collect all and sort later at the cost of a domestic police investigation. The ability for voice prints, mapping, chats, text, data extraction, software upgrade, desktop PC connected to cell phone access all got sold in layers of upgrades to police all over the USA by contractors. The ability to push police software down into a phone was another neat option for long term tracking. To infect any connected computer.
Certificates would have cost battery time from a telco branding perspective, be an expensive retro fit to towers and block easy police, mil, gov tracking, blocking and recording.
So everything was left wide open and all cell phones are trackable, voice prints can be collected and databases built on even the low end of local police budgets.
Junk or no crypto is left in place to ensure a few more years of easy city, gov, mil, law enforcement access to any phone on any network.
Then its time for the next contractor visit to up sell the next gen tracking, capture, voice print, gui mapping system totally hidden from any digital or walk in FOIA requests. Bonus if the local gov can be required to rent a full contractor support package for years :)

Re:Why Do These Things Even Work?

[AHuxley]

The days of a big spike in signal bars, a drop to an older standard was often talked about online and apps built to map such network strangeness.
This machine catches stingrays: Pwnie Express demos cellular threat detector (4/21/2015)
http://arstechnica.com/informa...
The new devices offered to police will try and harmonise to any signal strength in the local area and stay with any modern telco networks detected. The hand over would now be more seamless, to try and mimic just another new tower or smaller tower like telco service.

Re:Why Do These Things Even Work?

[sexconker]

Wouldn't work. If each tower has a unique certificate the (security conscious) phone owner would have to trust the new certificate and tower pair, possibly even referencing GPS coordinates.

Re:Why Do These Things Even Work?

[Anonymous Coward]

it appears you can buy a $250 replicant phone these days. FOSS has always seemed like step #1 to me.

Re:Why Do These Things Even Work?

[qeveren]

What's stopping the police from getting certs?

Re:Why Do These Things Even Work?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is so cute. Sexconker thinks that wireless carrier wouldn't sign the police stingray certificate. *points and laughs* Where have you been for the past decade?

Re:Why Do These Things Even Work?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can almost have all of that. The towers have IDs. Some phones even uses these IDs for location service when gps signals aren't available.

Not as good as certificates, because they can be spoofed. But they don't usually bother, for it is not necessary to interfere with the phones they want to mess with. So existing stingrays merely masquerade as "a tower belonging to a particular carrier", not "that particular tower"

Phones can already report tower IDs. So you can make an app to map them. Then, you need a programmable phone so you can use your list of towers as a whitelist. Such phones exist, and I'd guess tech-savy mafia uses them already.

Re:Why Do These Things Even Work?

[AmiMoJo]

There is SnoopSnitch for Android which uses a database and detection of unusual configurations. I've used it around London, it's quite an eye-opener.

Wait...

[drew_92123]

Basically what they're saying is that investing crimes in predominately black neighborhoods is racist... WTF???

Re:Wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

If the cops were smart, they'd give them exactly what they want. Let any law-abiding citizens know they have 24 hours to get the fuck out of the neighborhood, then they themselves leave and let them to their own devices.

Re:Wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

More like it's a manhunt looking for a criminal to justify itself.

Re:Whatevs

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he meant the niggers, mate.

Ironic Origin of Section 333

[SeattleLawGuy]

It is entirely conceivable that if the Stingrays and police were deployed in white neighborhoods and businesses, that most of the crime would be suddenly discovered there.

Good point--one point highlighted by The New Jim Crow, IIRC, which discussed studies on how white people used marijuana more than black people but got arrested for it far less.

Ironically, Section 333 (unlawful interference) was created to *enable* calls to the police and emergency services, and keep fly-by-night radio stations from interfering with police radios and shipboard communications for rescue. IIRC the Titanic suffered needless delays in rescue in part because of unregulated radio station broadcasts, although I don't recall offhand if that was part of the ammunition for 333 in particular or the Communications Act more generally.

The Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown is on the brief. Good people on the public policy side. This complaint is a good step in what may wind up being a long process. Worst case, even if nothing else were to come of it (and hopefully something will), this is still very useful and may save some lives--for one thing, it will probably cause Stingray manufacturers to work harder to make sure 911 service isn't interrupted.

Re:Whatevs

[Anonymous Coward]

Let them kill each other off. They've been doing a good bit of that every once in a while. The BPD should only get involved when a white person gets popped by the street trash that makes it up town to Charles Village.

Individual criminal charges

[Anonymous Coward]

Charge anyone who operated one of the devices with felony wiretapping. "Just following orders" has never been a valid excuse for breaking the law.

If it's good for the goose

[Anonymous Coward]

So what penalties for breaking federal law do the police get?

easy...

[Anonymous Coward]

don't use cellphones, or use an encrypted app.

Just encrypt

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't work. If each tower has a unique certificate the (security conscious) phone owner would have to trust the new certificate and tower pair, possibly even referencing GPS coordinates.

Who really cares? Have the phone route to an machine somewhere in the city that has a certificate and encrypt to that (trusted) machine. Eliminate (or at least reduce) the possibility of someone eavesdropping on your calls to your bank. Carriers should compete on this basis for an upper tier service, at least.

FCC Authority

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are they complaining to the FCC? They don't have authority to do anything... at least that's what the movie, music, Telco's say!

Perhaps stingray interferes causing one to get "emergency calls only" message when trying to call a valid #.

It blocks Pokemon GO, too!

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't catch them all while police are trying to catch us all!

The police use them around my small hometown and the biggest issue that I have is it interfering with calls and data while they're driving around with it, and of course the local Ingress/Pokémon GO portals/stops are around the downtown area where they patrol the most. *sigh*

So they'll track me while I'm walking around trying to hatch my 10km eggs!

Losers

[Anonymous Coward]

Send these losers back to where they came from #Trump2016

What is amazing to me

[ai4px]

What is amazing to me is that they *can* use the stingray device on an entire city, but they don't seem to be able to use them around JAILS. You know jails where the inmates aren't supposed to have cell phones but do... and the DoC files for an exception from the FCC and is told they can't install cell phone jammers. Meanwhile the inmates arrange for hits against guards they don't like. http://www.wistv.com/story/131...

FBI

[Anonymous Coward]

F B I