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ACLU sues Homeland Security over 'stingray' cell phone surveillance

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Re: ACLU sues Homeland Security over 'stingray' cell phone surveillance

#71
post #56
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH, Google and Facebook, with annual incomes larger than the GDP of a medium European country, can log everyone’s every breath, on the internet and, more recently, in real life, with impunity. I just can’t wrap my head how the municipal police doing it is “nightmarish authoritarianism”, but big adtech, de facto way more powerful, gets a cursory pass.

Google et al don’t arrest people or hold them in jail, so that is one dimension in which they are less able to pose a threat. That doesn’t mean that they don’t pose a threat though.

No, but they certainly can hand them over to those who can! https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/11/12/18089090/amazon-ech...

Re: ACLU sues Homeland Security over 'stingray' cell phone surveillance

#72
post #43
post #12

Stingray use requires a warrant and every case should be dismissed where one was used without a warrant. I'm sure that's the main reason they want to hide the use of stingrays, they know they're doing something wrong. Police having the ability to spy on everyone with little to no oversight is nightmarish authoritarianism, it's completely against the spirit of American democracy, not to mention in violation of The Con…

As part of some volunteer work I'm doing with Lucy Parsons Labs, I submitted a FOIA request to every single state's largest city, asking for search warrant records that would likely exist on complaints for search warrants, the warrants themselves, or from any audit. About 100 requests in total. After two months, only two cities have sent me their search warrant records. All other states have given me rejections sayin…

There is a similar problem with FOI requests in Australia.

It's not there to get information, it's there to give the appearance that they give information.

The most used excuse here is it will take "too many resources".

They often follow the same set of steps to legally delay or prevent information going out.

There is a FOI ombudsman, but they are so swamped the backlog is enormous.

Re: ACLU sues Homeland Security over 'stingray' cell phone surveillance

#73
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's super interesting. Those are international departure airports. I wonder if what they're doing is sniffing for phone numbers of interest showing up in the international terminal indicating a 'person of interest' is trying to leave or arrive. I assume people trying to leave or enter the country without permission might have false ID and a false name on their ticket but they probably don't think about changing th…

Or the reverse. Since airports are one of the very few places where you can positively identify a certain person was there at a certain time, you can combine a passenger list with a device list to get some soft matches to previously unlinked devices. Combine that linked metadata with other dragnet metadata, and you're going to learn a lot.

This makes a lot of sense to me.

Re: ACLU sues Homeland Security over 'stingray' cell phone surveillance

#74
If we had a crowd-sourced database of cell towers (picture & coordinates) wouldn't it then be straightforward to know (and report) when your phone wasn't connecting to a legitimate tower?

I for one want to make sure the criminals aren't intercepting my signal with home-made stingrays; the police have other lawful ways to get what they need.

Re: ACLU sues Homeland Security over 'stingray' cell phone surveillance

#75
post #43
post #12

Stingray use requires a warrant and every case should be dismissed where one was used without a warrant. I'm sure that's the main reason they want to hide the use of stingrays, they know they're doing something wrong. Police having the ability to spy on everyone with little to no oversight is nightmarish authoritarianism, it's completely against the spirit of American democracy, not to mention in violation of The Con…

As part of some volunteer work I'm doing with Lucy Parsons Labs, I submitted a FOIA request to every single state's largest city, asking for search warrant records that would likely exist on complaints for search warrants, the warrants themselves, or from any audit. About 100 requests in total. After two months, only two cities have sent me their search warrant records. All other states have given me rejections sayin…

I wonder, are court records generated by the issuing of warrants? If so, I imagine you could have gone at it from the other direction and simply gotten a list of warrants and looked for terms that looked stingray-ish. So maybe warrants aren't actually recorded in court records?

Re: ACLU sues Homeland Security over 'stingray' cell phone surveillance

#76
post #74

If we had a crowd-sourced database of cell towers (picture & coordinates) wouldn't it then be straightforward to know (and report) when your phone wasn't connecting to a legitimate tower? I for one want to make sure the criminals aren't intercepting my signal with home-made stingrays; the police have other lawful ways to get what they need.

Considering all the stuff that's open public information, it's a bit surprising that cell tower locations aren't.

Re: ACLU sues Homeland Security over 'stingray' cell phone surveillance

#77
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Latin for "Who will guard the guards themselves?".

Alternatively also translated as “Who watches the watchmen?”

And even without knowing Latin the sentence is recognizable :) At least to me, when I looked at it, it looked very similar to that. Guards, watchmen, custodians. Guarding, watching, being in custody of. And I know from other languages like French words like "qui" (though I don't speak French either, only know a select few words).

Re: ACLU sues Homeland Security over 'stingray' cell phone surveillance

#78
post #24

Some informed person can probably tell us: are there any technical developments on the horizon which could plausibly make stingrays unviable? From a lay perspective, it seems like cell tech hasn't been designed to meet some criteria that ought to be achievable. - Are there future cell technology standards being planned which would make it harder for a 3rd party device to impersonate a cell tower? (e.g. the police wou…

5G is by nature shorter range, which at least makes the surveillance harder to do and more targeted when it happens. But I can't say much for the protocol, having not done much with it.

I don't see this as being a stop gap, the short comings (not an intended pun) of the range and potential penetration of 5G almost certainly means 4G is going to be around in the long term.

Re: ACLU sues Homeland Security over 'stingray' cell phone surveillance

#79
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5G is by nature shorter range, which at least makes the surveillance harder to do and more targeted when it happens. But I can't say much for the protocol, having not done much with it.

On the flip side, I think this would make pinpoint the device‘s geo-location much easier.

Yeah that seems true, if there's more signal towers in a particular space it'll make triangulation of a person and their device easier to achieve through an increase of reference points.

Re: ACLU sues Homeland Security over 'stingray' cell phone surveillance

#80
post #74

If we had a crowd-sourced database of cell towers (picture & coordinates) wouldn't it then be straightforward to know (and report) when your phone wasn't connecting to a legitimate tower? I for one want to make sure the criminals aren't intercepting my signal with home-made stingrays; the police have other lawful ways to get what they need.

People are way ahead of you:

https://cellularprivacy.github.io/Android-IMSI-Catcher-Detec...

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