Police Regularly Use Stingrays Without A Warrant To Find Petty Criminals, Then Try To Hide That Fact
from the more-of-the-same dept
Over the last few years, we've published a ton of stories about the growing police reliance on Stingray cell site simulator devices (also known as IMSI catchers), that mimic a real cell phone tower and help provide the location of a certain mobile phone. As we've written, these devices have been super popular with police departments, who often receive them from the federal government with strict non-disclosure agreements, which means law enforcement has been known to lie to courts or simply drop cases where the usage is at risk of coming out in court.It seems that this story is getting more and more national attention. Brad Heath, over at USA Today, has a fairly deep dive into the fact that police are using these devices to solve petty crimes all the time, without a warrant, and then refusing to tell defendants how they were caught (which is a bit of a constitutional no-no). Heath specifically was able to get a police surveillance log in Baltimore, which detailed how the devices were used there.
The records show that the city's police used stingrays to catch everyone from killers to petty thieves, that the authorities regularly hid or obscured that surveillance once suspects got to court and that many of those they arrested were never prosecuted.Some of the cases are absolutely ridiculous -- such as the one where an angry husband grabbed his wife's phone and left the house. Police declared it a theft and used an IMSI catcher to track it down... but by that point, the husband had already given it back to his wife, so the police just showed up at her home where she already had the phone. Also, because it's so easy to use these devices to just go and locate anyone, Baltimore police sometimes used it just to find the location of witnesses (i.e., people who haven't committed any crimes). That's going way over the line of what's appropriate.
Defense attorneys assigned to many of those cases said they did not know a stingray had been used until USA TODAY contacted them, even though state law requires that they be told about electronic surveillance.
“I am astounded at the extent to which police have been so aggressively using this technology, how long they’ve been using it and the extent to which they have gone to create ruses to shield that use,” Stephen Mercer, the chief of forensics for Maryland’s public defenders, said.
These things are being used so often in so many cases with so little transparency, one hopes that the growing press attention will finally lead to much more accountability on how these devices are used and a requirement for a warrant.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: baltimore, cell site simulators, imsi catchers, law enforcement, police, privacy, stingrays
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
So somebody who presses charges against someone harassing them might then get stalked by those investigating the original crime? Way to fucking go! (-_Q)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
This is disturbing and insane. Even disgruntled terminated employees can invent things and convince detectives and the law to use them. This can complicate life on many levels. I know a few and I am working with the CA Republican party to outlaw this. Innocent people should not be harrassed by these tools. It can cause even the innocent people to become paranoid and especially if they are self-made. can't wait until this abuse is regulated
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Shoot the messenger brutalize, the witnesses and murder anyone that stands up for their rights.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The REAL question the cops need to answer.
If the highly probable answer given is "no," my advice is "Brace for sh**storm!"
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
If they wanted to, local law enforcement agencies could probably declare martial law right now and the federal government would back them up. Look at what's happening in Ferguson.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Turn about
They know they have something to hide and they are worried about equal use of this kind of tech.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
But,but,but...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: But,but,but...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: But,but,but...
/Sarc
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Give a little power and LEO's will abuse it , they're abusive by nature name a bully who isn't.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The low hanging fruit should be that any tower that's moving is automatically discounted in the phone's connection algorithm. Shouldn't be too hard to at the very least make an app to detect a moving tower.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
This shit is predominantly illegal and thus should be stopped. And if law enforcement is turning itself into organized crime, it falls to the citizens to bypass them on the way to the courts.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
Thanks to metadata, there is no anonymised data anymore. ;)
But seriously, if you think there's missing pieces in that project, why not let the devs know or even join the effort yourself? You sure seem to know more about that stuff than I.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
95% wrong, 5% OK?
On the other hand, not disclosing that it was cell phone tracking is still wrong. At a minimum, disclosing that it was done by cell-phone tracking would satisfy the (likely illegal certainly immoral) NDAs, since there is ambiguity if it was done through a (likely immoral but sadly certainly legal) business records cell-tower dump.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Imagine if Stingray technology could be modified
Then, instead of using a No Knock Warrant, executed by a paramilitary force that could take over some small countries, and possibly at the wrong address, the police could simply quietly arrest the major criminal in a setting that is safe and convenient.
It is unfortunate that this technology only works for finding witnesses or small time crooks.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Imagine if Stingray technology could be modified
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The Truth Free Press
Back in the real world:
The growing press attention will lead to a much smaller press attention, now that the Players have realized the Adversary has become aware of another one of their secret War-time surveillance activities.
After all, the Press is owned by the same Players. :)
End result: more secrecy and much less accountability.
---
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Stingray's
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
A Government Under Siege - by its own civilian population.
"Are you happy now? Are you going to do anything about it?"
.... is,
Its not very likely that the judges can actually do anything, since all the US laws pertaining to such things, were (secretly) changed after 9/11.
The long answer....
You see, according to the War Time Measures Laws enacted right after they pulled 9/11 out of their hat, (and also according to the newly interpreted reduced-to-one-page US constitution), the police are not just allowed to both secretly use the stingray devices, (and any other technology that gets the job done), and to lie to the judges about the stingray devices, (and any other technology that is being secretly used), legally, they have been DIRECTED TO DO SO, by the federal government, who also secretly supplies them with the devices, the training and the legal immunity ....
because terrorists .....
because druggies .....
...are Civilian Enemies from among the general public, and could be anyone - even your mom!!
You see, there's a war afoot, and We The People are the enemy, so we cannot be allowed to realize that the US government has declared war (secretly) upon We The People.
Letting the enemy know that they're under attack, is absolutely not going to happen if the USG has anything to say about it - thus the legal secrecy and the legal use of secret devices and the legal perjury - because if the Enemy was aware that it is being attacked as the enemy of the state, We The People might fight back.
And if there is one thing cowards really hate, its when someone they're attacking, fights back.
So, judges will continue to pretend to not know this is happening for another decade or more - as long as the public allows them to do so actually - the USG will do nothing to change this for certain - because to do otherwise, is to hamper the war effort, and to aid and abet the enemy; the US public, known to the Feds as The Adversary.
And any judge who fore-warned the Enemy, would be seen by the Feds as a war criminal and at the very least, unemployed.
---
[ link to this | view in chronology ]