Federal Agents Used a Stingray To Track an Immigrant's Phone (detroitnews.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Investigators from Immigration and Custom Enforcement as well as the FBI have been using controversial cell-spoofing devices to secretly track down undocumented immigrants, court records show. According to a report the Detroit News, which obtained an unsealed federal search warrant affidavit, FBI and ICE agents in Michigan used a Stingray device to ensnare a restaurant worker from El Salvador in March. The devices, which were originally intended for counter-terrorism use, have come under fire because there are currently no clear rules governing when law enforcement is allowed to deploy them. Even in cases where authorities have a clear target in mind, they run the risk of exposing personal information of other innocent people in range. Until 2015, Federal investigators were free to deploy the devices without a search warrant. At that point the Justice Department laid out a policy requiring investigators get approval to use the devices first.

Comments

Need to fix cell phone protocols

[Gravis Zero]

The fact that such a device exists is clear evidence that the protocols for cellular phones need to be fixed so that they will only connect to a master list of cellular towers that are in specific locations. What you may not know about cellular phones is that much more than this is possible. You can push an "update' from a tower to your cell phone and it's all done without any consent. Even if you have the latest security focused Blackphone, your phone will still accept any update pushed to your phone by any tower. The reason for this is that the baseband modem functions independently and always trusts that the network is not compromised.