Details Emerging On Stingray Technology, Allowing Feds To Locate People By Pretending To Be Cell Towers
from the without-warrants-of-course dept
More details are emerging on yet another secret program used by federal law enforcement to locate people using their mobile phones... but without obtaining warrants. The WSJ has the scoop on what's generically referred to as Stingray tracking devices (even if the actual products go by a few names, and only some are actually called Stingrays). They appear to be devices that mimic mobile phone towers. The feds use them hoping to have the phones of people they're tracking connect to the device (instead of a real mobile phone tower), and then using signal strength to figure out how far away they are. Do that a few times and you can triangulate someone's location, even if they're not making a call, and without having to ask the telcos for any location info (which, so far, they've been more than happy to turn over anyway).They apparently used this technology to arrest a guy named Daniel David Rigmaiden, but he's now causing some trouble. That's because he's asking for the details of how he was found, and the court seems equally concerned that this was done outside of the bounds of the Fourth Amendment. It won't surprise you to discover that law enforcement regularly uses such Stingrays without a warrant. Apparently, the court is skeptical of the government's claim that it doesn't need a warrant to use such a device:
In a February hearing, according to a transcript, Judge Campbell asked the prosecutor, "Were there warrants obtained in connection with the use of this device?"Last week, the feds argued that they should not have to explain how they tracked Rigmaiden, because it would reveal too much information "since its public release could harm law enforcement efforts by compromising future use of the equipment." So, we can't tell you if the tracking system we use violates the 4th Amendment, because, you know, you might stop us from using it. Very compelling, but all too typical of law enforcement these days. Hopefully the court rejects the argument.
The prosecutor, Frederick A. Battista, said the government obtained a "court order that satisfied [the] language" in the federal law on warrants. The judge then asked how an order or warrant could have been obtained without telling the judge what technology was being used. Mr. Battista said: "It was a standard practice, your honor."
Judge Campbell responded that it "can be litigated whether those orders were appropriate."
Later in the article, various law enforcement officials say that they can use the device since it only detects location, but doesn't eavesdrop. That's pretty questionable. The 4th Amendment doesn't make such a distinction. In fact, reading the 4th Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.It would seem that using such a device to locate a person in their house without a warrant seems to clearly violate the text of the Amendment. Hopefully the court will agree.
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Filed Under: 4th amendment, privacy, stingray, tracking, warrants
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Agree and what?
Why is there no jail time for violation of people's constitutional rights?
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Re: Re: What Constitutional Right is That?
Defense Attorney: "Officer, how did you find my client?"
Officer: "I saw him walking out of the Denny's on 5th Ave."
Defense Attorney: "Did you have a warrant to look at him or were you intercepting his electromagnetic emanations in violation of his constitutionally protected rights to reflect light privately?"
Officer: "What???"
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Re: Re: Re: What Constitutional Right is That?
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Re: Re: Re: What Constitutional Right is That?
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It has to know which ones are still being taken seriously so it knows which liberties to erode next!
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FCC
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Re: FCC
If they transmit, tough, it's a lot more troubling. No only are they disrupting normal communications, but, if they act as regular cell towers, there is also the possibility of eavesdropping and man-in-the-middle-attacks on a (supposedly) secure channel.
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Re: Re: FCC
"A stingray works by mimicking a cellphone tower, getting a phone to connect to it and measuring signals from the phone."
It doesn't explain if it's a man-in-the-middle thing and the signal continues on to a real tower, or if the signal stops there. Ether way, it doesn't sound like a legal device.
Are these devices smart enough to not let others connect to it, or are the cops getting information for everyone in range?
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Re: Re: Re: FCC
The devices, though particular types/brands may vary, only allow a connection to a single phone. Allowing for more connections -> more expensive hardware.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: FCC
The signal could stop at the fake tower, but it could also be relayed if they want to try a man in the middle (for voice intercept), but this is much more complicated and the equipment needs to be more sophisticated than for just ID or locating.
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But unless I miss my guess, the police are using the cheapest equipment possible most of the time.
Do you disagree?
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We all know how gov't provisioning goes; $5 for the part and $95k for the procuring agent.
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Re: Re: FCC
Yes, it is transmitting. It is not a passive device which needs to be placed a real cell phone tower and can decode the signals, it is a device which mimics a cell phone tower and actively sends out signals.
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Re: FCC
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more common is for another part of the apparatus of government to call them on it and things to be halted that way, but even that is not as common as it should be compared to instances of such activity.
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Big fat deal!
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sad sad sad
Not for at least the last 10 years. Maybe longer than that.
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Re: sad sad sad
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Re: Big fat deal!
And wouldn't it be ironic if the police kept someone from getting help, because they were too intent on skirting around the process of getting a warrant?
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Re: Re: Big fat deal!
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Re: Re: Re: Big fat deal!
There would be one-sided echos, for one thing.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Big fat deal!
Depending on the cell phone tower/network, it may also just refuse the data because the timestamp is too far off.
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Re: Re: Re: Big fat deal!
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So if it is just finding the phone and not transmitting I don't think that can be called interception.
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Re: Re: Big fat deal!
They're using (or could use) common off-the-shelf equipment to do this, most likely. You could do the exact same thing.
Also assuming that (for cost reasons) they're using the most inexpensive solution for their problem -- tracking cell phones -- then they aren't creating a black hole at all. The cell phone contacts the fake tower, the fake tower says "I can't handle your call", the cell phone uses a different (real) tower. You can still make calls to 911 or anywhere else.
If they are also listening in on conversations, they have to use slightly (but not outrageously) more expensive equipment. This acts as a full on tower and actually handles the call. To avoid interfering with the call, it would pass the data on to another tower and be a Man in the Middle.
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Re: Re: Re: Big fat deal!
Also, if it transmits anything back on regulated frequencies, it must be licensed by the FCC, regardless of whether it is used by law enforcement (e.g., police radios are regulated by the FCC).
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Re: Big fat deal!
To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure which side of the argument my opinions fall; I haven't really got a problem if, by these actions, they've stopped criminal activity which is taking away others rights. Though if that was the case, I would presume a warrant would be relatively easy to obtain. Is this just laziness on the part of law enforcement? If so, then it would seem to have backfired if the chap who was arrested now has a get out of jail free card due to this laziness.
Is there ever a valid reason to take such short cuts if there's even the slightest chance that that very same short cut can be used to harm your case against the accused?
If they make it legal to trace/track people without a warrant, how long do we wait before the use this technology on a massive scale as anopther 'big brother' tool to know where everyone is all of the time?
That said, is it a problem to know where everyone is all of the time if they're not doing anything illegal?
So many questions, so little time...
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Re: Re: Big fat deal!
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Isn't there an old saying - Set a thief to catch a thief, if what they're doing prevents or solves crime, does it detract from their own criminality?
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Re: Big fat deal!
That is only legal because you don't do it very well - if you were to do an accurate simulation of a specific lighthouse (in the days before GPS and earlier marine nav systems when these things mattered) you would be arrested and face severe penalties for endangering shipping.
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I read that to say that if someone is suspected of doing something illegal, and if there is sufficient probable cause, then a warrant can be obtained for whatever purpose.
In other words, if there is probable cause then they should be able to get a warrant pretty easily. While I think these devices have a use, I wonder what they are doing with the data they collect. Are they used for a given phone number to track it? Or are they just collecting data and sifting? If the latter is true what are they doing with all the other location data? If they are retaining it then I can see why people are up in arms over this.
Also, when a cell phone connects to it, does that mean that the cell phone is unable to make and receive calls because it's not an actual cell tower?
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"The secret police" are hated with good reason.
To be fair, I think it's more like "we can't tell you how our system works, because then the public would know how to beat it". A slightly less egregious argument, though still false; the police should not have the power to keep such secrets. My right to know what they're doing trumps their desire to know where I am.
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Re: "The secret police" are hated with good reason.
It's a really bad idea to assume that the public don't know how it works. Any good security person knows that security by obscurity is a bad idea. The really big criminal fish wil find out how it works - and then have an edge over you because you still assume they don't know.
The response to the above should be - we'll force you to tell the public because that will force you to do a proper job and not be so lazy.
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Re: Re: "The secret police" are hated with good reason.
Chances are the really big criminal fish had a hand in developing and implementing the system. There is nothing they need to find out because they already know. The same folks that developed Rape-Scan and other technological weapons against freedom and the constitution.
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Re: Re: "The secret police" are hated with good reason.
And the little ones, too. You can easily get all the information you need yourself through Google. Really, this kind of equipment has been around for a long time, and the information you need to use it (or even to build it) and detect it is hardly a secret. If they're keeping it a secret to prevent countermeasures, they failed years before they even thought of doing this.
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Turn off the phone, they cannot track you. Leave the phone on, you may as well put a big blue flashing light on top of your house.
Remember, the airwaves are the "public" airwaves, not the private airwaves.
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With GSM and UMTS at least there is a short period at the start of every single call where it's not encrypted. It's a necessity to enable the phone and tower to talk enough to agree on a radio channel and encryption from then on. I don't know well enough about CDMA/EVDO
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There is no monitoring of encrypted voice communication.
Please try to stay focused on what they are doing, not what you are scared someone might do one day.
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http://www.cellxion.com/SpecialtyProducts.aspx
However, it is easy enough to transmit and receive only the "control" channel, which is likely what these devices do. They aren't trying to intercept the calls, they are only looking for the phone being active. They don't need the user to make a phone call to be able to see the phone, as the phone is routinely connecting to and updating which towers it can see.
Looking at the equipment in the story, it is clear they cannot decode any calls. They are only mimicking a single function of a tower to ping a device and find it's signal level.
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That's primarily the gas generator....
http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/32282/?mod=related
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http://geeknizer.com/diy-drone-plane-hack-wifi-phone-calls/
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Oh I get it, you are a government employee that is why you think everything is so expensive and big.
Or are you from Texas?
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i mean, every single tower and phone has to be able to decrypt it anyway, and the key would have to be standard across devices or something because it's basically a 'hey, i'm over here. ask me for the pass word so i can access your functions!' type message. that key would have to work cross-network, too. so it's highly likely that, due to the only meaningful differences being cost and that one bit of legal protection for their Customers, the cellphone companies wouldn't do it.
not that i actually know what the case is, of course. so it doesn't really answer your question, but does explain the logic. (i hope. if i did it right.)
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Don't worry...
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4th Amendment
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Re: 4th Amendment
"They" need to get a warrant. If they can't get a warrant then they must stop being lazy and get more proof. If they can't get more proof then they must stop (being fucks). They must stop being facilitators of the American Deconstruction.
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This is perhaps a decent case in point. Law enforcement try to claim that this is specifically provided for in the 4th amendment. I would have thought that the spirit of the amendment would certainly apply to this kind of situation, if not the specific wording.
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More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMSI-catcher
Law enforcement normally have legislative powers to transmit in a frequency band owned by telco. Actual use of the equipment for surveillance is subject to varying levels of legislation in different countries depending on whether they're IDing a target, locating a target, or eavesdropping.
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That's how telcos can locate you, (since the towers log everything), which is the information that police would go to a telco with a warrant for.
Without connecting to multiple towers at once, your exact location would be very difficult to determine.
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Unless your lucky like me and you live in a area with crap signal. I connect to a maximum of 3 towers at once if I'm really lucky, and that still only gives me 1 bar of service on 3G. On edge it only connects to one tower but I have full service :D
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As they knew the phone "number", should have gotten a warrant.
But since the purpose is to object to evidence gathered after locating, I doubt it's critical to the case. It's not /initial/ information. Police didn't just ping phones at random. It's a questionable step but the answer is they've probably found the guy who made off with $4 million, and this isn't that severe a breach of 4th in comparison. -- This is a legalistic objection by someone with big bucks for a lawyer. Police do worse at most traffic stops. But /questions/ such as this are focused on.
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Re: As they knew the phone "number", should have gotten a warrant.
However, illegal activities during any part of the investigation throws doubt on the entire investigation and can invalidate it. Thus, any reasonable doubt about the hardware used should be investigated itself.
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Re: Re: As they knew the phone "number", should have gotten a warrant.
This stuff is as a result of having a phone number (possibly from an informant, or from other services), and obtaining a warrant for phone records (and other information relative to the phone, such as it's ID etc, which the cell phone company would turn over based on a warrant, issued with probably cause).
From there, the rest is simple.
Chronno, I think you are trying to read way more into this than is going on. Probably cause, no call decrypting, warrants... it's a slam dunk and certainly doesn't appear on the surface to violate any of the relevant amendments. No information (except that transmitted over the public airwaves with the permission of the phone's owner) were used.
If he turned off his phone, the police would not have been able to track him. He chose to have a cell phone, he chose to leave it on, and he chose to have it broadcast. What more is required here?
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Re: Re: Re: As they knew the phone "number", should have gotten a warrant.
If this was a slam dunk, then there wouldn't be any reason to hide it. Police aren't shy about admitting they use wiretaps (when they remember to get warrants). Quite the contrary, warrantless location info is actually controversial and not settled case law.
However, I liken the usage of this technology to acquire a suspect's location to the use of thermal imaging to see inside a home. And in Kyllo vs. U.S., the Supreme Court ruled that such thermal imagery constitutes a search.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: As they knew the phone "number", should have gotten a warrant.
The reason to hide it is that it is an incredible advantage. Almost every criminal in the US is carrying cell phone, which repeatedly and often announces over the public airwaves it's presence, location, and so on. Letting the criminals knows that this system is being used would likely lead to the criminals disabling their phones or "trading" phones around to make it look like they are in different places.
Thermal energy is different from a cell phone in functioning. It requires police to look at an individual house and "see" things that are happening inside of it. A cell phone is transmitting a signal on public airwaves that could be received by anyone in public places, without even knowing which house to look at. They aren't the same at all.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: As they knew the phone "number", should have gotten a warrant.
This is a bunk argument and you know it. Criminals know they can be wiretapped and the government doesn't hide that ability. Criminals know that the government has gotten location info from telcos without warrants, thanks to multiple stories in the news, some of which were covered right here on Techdirt. Even criminals in movies shut their phones off to avoid detection. The horse has left the barn.
"Thermal energy is different from a cell phone in functioning."
I disagree. Both are electromagnetic energy (one is infrared, one is microwave). Both signals originate from places known to have an expectation of privacy (e.g. in your home). Infrared is a "public airwave" (AFAIK it's not regulated by the FCC, whereas cell phone frequencies actually are regulated). Infrared can also be received by anyone in a public place with the appropriate tools.
And it does not require police to look at an individual house. They can easily scan many houses, for instance by flying overhead in a helicopter and aiming the thermal camera down below.
It could also be argued that this form of control tower spoofing allows the police to "see" inside many homes, by virtue of being able to locate a person who would not otherwise be visible.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: As they knew the phone "number", should have gotten a warrant.
Yes, and this is why they use random pay phones, neighbors phones, and other methods for communication because it is incredibly hard to get warrants for every phone in a building or neighborhood.
"I disagree. Both are electromagnetic energy (one is infrared, one is microwave). Both signals originate from places known to have an expectation of privacy (e.g. in your home). Infrared is a "public airwave" (AFAIK it's not regulated by the FCC, whereas cell phone frequencies actually are regulated). Infrared can also be received by anyone in a public place with the appropriate tools."
One is naturally occuring, one is not. One is the results of a natural process, one intentionally broadcasts a signal far beyond any walls in order to get service. One requires that you know where to look for it, the other is broadcast widely over a significant area. One can be turned off, one cannot.
They are the same as a snake and a piece of string.
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Re: Re: Re: As they knew the phone "number", should have gotten a warrant.
Where are the focking safeguards?
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Re: Re: Re: As they knew the phone "number", should have gotten a warrant.
Citation requested
This is ALWAYS the first line of defense when our Constitutional rights are threatened or breached.
"It's not like we didn't have a reason..."
Well, it's not like I don't have any rights as a citizen!
Inevitably, the technology ALWAYS get misused by the people who are supposed to be working for us and protecting us.
I challenge anyone to show evidence of a single piece of modern technology (say, last 20 years)that has NOT been misused by authorities! Anyone up for that challenge?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: As they knew the phone "number", should have gotten a warrant.
The Segway human transporter, has been used by police, but not misused (as far as I have looked).
Aprilla's Fuel cell bike, can't find anything about authorities even knowing about it, let alone using/abusing it.
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"law enforcement".
The spooks firmly believes that they are justified in using any means available for catching "terrorists" (anyone muslim or arabic), child pornographers, drug dealers, and people who criticize the government.
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Re: "law enforcement".
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Binoculars next?
Surely it's far worse to 'search' for you using a pair of binoculars to actually look at you?
Maybe...
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Re: Binoculars next?
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Re: Re: Binoculars next?
Let me fix that for you...
Your cell phone will broadcast your location even when you are in your own home.
Privacy is only a legend, and by that, I mean a myth!
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Re: Re: Binoculars next?
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Re: Re: Re: Binoculars next?
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Disturbing
Protection from unreasonable search is reserved for citizens, not law enforcement organizations.
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Unreasonable Search and Seizure
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Fix the Rule
Emphasis and addition mine.
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defense?
I hope my phone can learn how to ignore this type of man in the middle attacker.
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Technically speaking, all cellphones in that location can be tracked by big brother. This is just insane
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cell site simulators
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