Michigan State Police Used Forfeiture Funds To Upgrade Its Stingray
from the first-with-the-'terrorism,'-then-with-the-'free-money' dept
There are a few ways law enforcement agencies acquire cell tower spoofers. Very rarely do agencies pay for these expensive devices themselves. (Meaning with their funds drawn from their own departments. Obviously, no government agency is self-funded.) In most cases, funding in whole or in part is obtained from the DHS -- something nearly any agency can obtain simply by checking [X] BECAUSE TERRORISM when applying for a Homeland Security grant.
Agencies are also using seized funds from asset forfeiture programs. The Michigan State Police used both methods to buy and upgrade its Stingray, according to documents obtained by the ACLU.
For nearly a decade, the Michigan State Police has had secretive cellphone tracking devices that were bought to fight terrorism but instead are used to solve everyday crimes, internal documents show.But that didn't stop the state police from telling the DHS that it was going to use the device to beat back terrorists.
More than 250 pages of emails, invoices and other documents show the state police in 2006 acquired cellphone simulator technology, which lets police collect large amounts of data including the location of users. The equipment was upgraded in 2013 and an internal memo indicates it was used last year on 128 cases ranging from homicide to burglary and fraud, but not terrorism.
The documents acquired by the ACLU indicate the state police paid Harris Corp. $206,500 in 2006 for equipment that was “vital to the war on terrorism” and allows “the state to track the physical location of a suspected terrorist.”Seeing as burglary and fraud aren't nearly as fund-worthy as actual terrorism, the agency apparently decided against going to the DHS well twice. The second round of funding was internal, but padded by plenty of external "donors."
The equipment was fully funded by a U.S. Homeland Security grant and the cost matches Harris Corp. prices lists for its Stingray device, Wessler said.
In 2013, the state used asset forfeiture funds to pay Harris $593,450 for “surveillance and countersurveillance equipment and supplies,” records show.The money isn't going to waste though. While the state police may have trouble finding enough "serious" crime (documents show 82 arrests and the location of six missing persons… but still no terrorism) to deploy the device against, it apparently needs very little prompting to put it to use. According to the records, the state police fire up the Stingray (now most likely a Stingray 2.0, aka, Hailstorm) once every three days.
Whether further upgrades will be this easy for the state to obtain remains to be seen. For one, this document release, along with last year's discovery of Oakland County (MI) Sheriff's Department's previously-unmentioned Stingray, has placed the use of these surveillance devices under additional scrutiny by legislators.
Additionally, the state government recently passed an asset forfeiture reform bill. While it didn't go as far as many had hoped (thanks to the objections of law enforcement lobbyists), the new law does raise the level of evidence needed to process a forfeiture from "a preponderance" (which sounds much weightier than it is) to "clear and convincing." It also requires additional reporting from law enforcement agencies on the seizure and distribution of funds and property.
That being said, some legislators still don't see a problem with law enforcement agencies doing whatever they want with surveillance equipment they don't want to talk about.
State Rep. Kurt Heise, R-Plymouth Township, chairman of the House Criminal Justice Committee, said McMillin’s bills [introducing a warrant requirement for Stingray use] would have “tied the hands of police.”There's a company man. Heise, of course, speaks with authority on the subject of Stingrays, law enforcement burden and the ripeness of the issue. After all, he had no clue about the technology or who had it until someone else pointed it out to him.
“Right now, I don’t think this is an issue ripe for state action,” Heise said. “The burden is on law enforcement to demonstrate they are operating under the constitution ... If the ACLU wants to challenge this in court, then we may have to let the courts sort it out.”
Heise said he wasn’t aware the state police have the technology and isn’t concerned about it.
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Filed Under: asset forfeiture, imsi catchers, michigan, police, stingrays, surveillance
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So basically
Don't they at some time actually need to decide whether they are running an organized crime syndicate or a state department and then act accordingly? I don't think this mixed strategy facilitates the kind of synergies that would strengthen the actual missive of those departments.
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Re: So basically
I guess their priorities are right. /s
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At this point we may as well get used to being always spied on and simply take care what we say, when we say it, so we won't up in a jail cell.
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Re: So basically
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Re: Re: So basically
When purported public interests trump individuals' rights, it's mainstream communism. "Comrade, we need better surveillance equipment to make sure nobody's stepping over the lines and you are carrying more money around than any law-abiding citizen would. You seem to be a drug trafficker but we'll let you go this time if you hand over your suspicious cash quietly for this worthy cause."
The police state bit is: "We'll take it anyway, but it's your choice how much we'll make this hurt."
But that's only a minor variation.
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Re: Re: Re: So basically
I'm not sure we've ever had any political or economic system tested sufficiently before the greedy sociopathic fuckwits took over and ruined it. Personally, I really want to try out minarcho-paradoxicalism.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: So basically
Well, yes. That's the whole selling point of a democracy: it has no single point of failure, so it takes more effort and longer to corrupt.
If the U.S.' democracy were set up well, it would have 150 million points of failure all-in-all (simple majority). It isn't, so it's rather a few hundred instead. And they've all been taken by now.
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Re:
Because that's what this is actually about.
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Re:
illegally SPY with the Stingray to illegally steal money to buy a newer bigger Stingray...
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