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Canada's RCMP National Police Force Reveals Use of Secretive Cellphone Surveillance Technology (www.cbc.ca)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC.ca: The RCMP for the first time is publicly confirming it uses cellphone surveillance devices in investigations across Canada -- but at the same time says the potential of unauthorized snooping in Ottawa, as reported by CBC News, poses a threat to national security. The RCMP held the briefing in the wake of a CBC News investigation that found evidence that devices known as IMSI catchers may be in use near government buildings in Ottawa for the purpose of illegal spying. After shrouding their own use of the technology in secrecy for years, the RCMP took the unprecedented step of speaking publicly about the devices -- also known as Stingrays or Mobile Device Identifiers (MDIs) -- to address public concern amidst mounting questions about their use. The RCMP says that MDIs -- of which it owns 10 -- have become "vital tools" deployed scores of times to identify and track mobile devices in 19 criminal investigations last year and another 24 in 2015. [RCMP Chief Supt. Jeff Adam] says in all cases but one in 2016, police got warrants. The one exception was an exigent circumstance -- in other words, an emergency scenario "such as a kidnapping," said Adam, whose office tracks every instance where an MDI has been used by the RCMP. He says using an MDI requires senior police approval as well as getting a judge's order. And he says the technology provides only a first step in an investigation allowing officers to identify a device. He says only then can police apply for additional warrants to obtain a user's "basic subscriber information" such as name and address connected to the phone. Then, he says, only if the phone and suspect are targets of the investigation can police seek additional warrants to track the device or conduct a wiretap to capture communications. Adam says the RCMP currently has 24 technicians trained and authorized to deploy the devices across Canada. He knows other police forces own and use them too, but declined to name them.
fits nicely.
I've been following this story since it broke a few days ago and other than the period in 2015 when the RCMP got lax, their use of the Stingrays as well as the controls put in place for their use seems reasonable.
Police are going to look for ways to monitor criminals' communications and this is one of the tools for doing that. As long there is a process where a judge approves the need for using the device and the rights and privacy of individuals caught as "incidental collections" is protected I don't see any problems here.
Maybe I'm imagining a perfect world that organizations like the RCMP don't live in, but if devices like cellphones are out there, police organizations are going to want to tap/track/monitor them.
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Used in Ottawa near parlement buildings for exigent circumstances but they have 24 technicians across the country. Total hosers.
Seriously though, fuck those fuckers. Where will it all end? I want a new timeline - one where people inherently understand this shit is WRONG . Why is it so hard for these people to grasp??? It's really not difficult.
In Canada, ping counters run backwards eh?
have been in use since 2003 according to wikipedia. I actually thought it was longer but maybe that was something similar with a different name.
But they have been readily distributed amongst the underground already.
I day trade stocks and literally would notice if even a few millis of latency slipped in. I sit and monitor realtime HFT stock prices down to the sub-microsecond level with self-written software speaking to many brokers and exchanges.
Similar to KimDotCom noticing when he was tapped due to his ping suffering in online gaming (he is super competitive actually if you didn't know), I would also notice. I watch laptops on local wifi, the cellphone, and of course devices at home are also monitoring things and will alert me over ham radio freqs which my handheld would pick up if I was nearby shopping (licensed ham).
So I think I monitor too many networks to effectively fall victim to this. Plus I kinda helped write one of the stingray detector tools (ISMI catcher-detectors). One thing for sure as a law-abiding software developer, I hate pigs and love writing software and using technology to stop them.
Things like this is why it's so utterly laughable that anyone is worried about ISP privacy.
You have none; even the thin illusion of privacy we liked to maintain as a pleasant fiction had been shattered. Your TV is spying on you. Everyone in the world has access to your computer camera and microphone. The government long ago started recording every use of mobile devices along with location data.
Lots of people, between government, corporations and criminals know everything about you. So why on earth are you worried about privacy? That ship has sailed. If you really cared you would disconnect; the FACT that perhaps .0000000001% of the people that say they care do anything of the sort exposes them for the laughable hypocrites they truly are.
The only sane way forward is to proclaim that at least everyone's information is just as visible as yours, so why worry? When people say "dance like no-one is watching" it's not because people are not watching. It's because to be truly free anymore you must stop caring what others think of what you do, because "they" will know.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Canada, a great place to visit but, not for the whole weekend. (Thanks Henry).
May the lies we live by make us strong, healthy, happy and wise - Kurt Vonnegut.
nt
That's why I always randomize my IMEI number every morning.
Seems there is no safe place left on Earth. Perhaps Rangoon?
Kevin Mitnick (Yes, THAT Kevin Mitnick) has a book that talks all about the different ways that you are under surveillance - whether it's via cell phones, web browsing, emailing. While the book talks about how one can try to mitigate some of this BS that's going on, he also goes into detail of what and some of this technology does. I feel that it's written in a way that anyone could understand. Unfortunately to ways of protecting ourselves are still very difficult to implement...
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Inv...
Go in any Petro-Canada or Loblaws, buy cash an unlocked cellphone with a $25 voucher, and that's it, no name or address associated with the phone.
You can also buy any used phone on kijiji and put a petro SIM inside, phone metadata will be connected to previous owner!
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
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