Bipartisan Bill Seeks Warrants For Police Use of 'Stingray' Cell Trackers (usatoday.com)

Tulsa_Time quotes a report from USA Today: A bipartisan group of House and Senate lawmakers introduced legislation Wednesday requiring police agencies to get a search warrant before they can deploy powerful cellphone surveillance technology known as "stingrays" that sweep up information about the movements of innocent Americans while tracking suspected criminals. "Owning a smartphone or fitness tracker shouldn't give the government a blank check to track your movements," said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who introduced the bill with Reps. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and John Conyers, D-Mich. "Law enforcement should be able to use GPS data, but they need to get a warrant. This bill sets out clear rules to make sure our laws keep up with the times." The legislation introduced Wednesday, called the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance (GPS) Act, would require a warrant for all domestic law enforcement agencies to track the location and movements of individual Americans through GPS technology without their knowledge. It also aims to combat high-tech stalking by creating criminal penalties for secretly using an electronic device to track someone's movements.

Comments

Re:Does this mean ...

[Motherfucking Shit]

They already "need" a warrant to use the results in court, which is why the Justice Department has dropped multiple cases involving stingrays rather than see them go to trial. They're fully aware that the first judge who gets one of these cases will throw it out and set precedent that the stingrays can't be used.

Defective by Design?

[ytene]

I appreciate that this comment is asking that we consider the technical equivalent of "Puuting the Genie Back in the Bottle", but it seems to me that the fundamental issue with the current Stingray technology happens to be the "bulk data capture" nature of the way that it operates...

In one sense this is unavoidable - when you have a piece of technology that imitates a cellphone tower by giving the strongest local signal, it will sweep up multiple handsets each time it is activated.

On the other hand, would it be possible for a judge to declare that the *operator interface* to the stingray device must by law force the operator to enter the particulars of a specific mobile phone handset, thereby preventing the stingray operator for conducting blanket surveillance?

Quite obviously, I know nothing about the inner workings of stingray technology, but it is clear to me that the principle by which it operates is to deem that every cell phone user within range is guilty of a crime - since the technology indiscriminately targets them.

If one motorist breaks the speed limit on a particular road at a particular time, a Law Enforcement Officer is not entitled to stop every vehicle on the road and take details of the driver and their passengers... similarly there should be limits on what that same officer can do when tracking a suspected criminal using stingray technology.

As technologists we know that it would be possible to develop a stingray device that had to be pre-programmed with a cell phone ID before it could be activated. We know that it would also be possible to require that device to have a legally tamper-proof log, to require that to have a license to operate (it is a wireless device that surely needs FCC approval to be used) that there would be supervisory controls that could be enforce.

Law enforcement are quick to claim that the rapid advancement of technology is such that they need extra powers in order to be able to keep pace with the criminals in society. Well, OK, but that should not be grounds for permitting those same officers to bend or break the law in the process. That places the Law Enforcement Agencies in the same category as criminals: as far as honest citizens are concerned that makes LEOs just as dangerous, or perhaps even more so, since they have the implied authority of the state backing them up...

The Enforcement of the law must itself be legal, or it undermines any and all claims of authority it may have over the citizenry it was designed to protect.

Re:like this is going to matter.

[Curunir_wolf]

Are you really that dense? This is just for show. The cops will keep on illegally using it to spy on people, without warrants. They don't have to use it in court, just to spy on people and help them set up the situation.

It's actually worse than that. It's a Trojan horse. Note the final paragraph: "It also aims to combat high-tech stalking by creating criminal penalties for secretly using an electronic device to track someone's movements." Yea, they claim a goal, but that won't be part of the bill, just a new criminal penalty they can use to bludgeon citizens with. I guarantee no law enforcement will ever be charged with that new "crime", but you'll see it pop up in all kinds of indictments of anyone else the feds want to go after. This would make it illegal to, for example, use FindMyiPhone to figure out where your stolen phone is. Illegal to track your kids using either their phone or your car's GPS. EVERY divorce will have lawyers using this to try to get indictments of spouses. If you try to prove your wife was cheating on you by showing how you followed their location, you've now confessed to a crime. I'm sure there are LOTS of scenarios I'm not thinking of right now, but you can be sure that prosecutors will come up with lots of novel ones.