Court: Cell Site Location Records From Five Minutes Ago Are 'Historical,' Not 'Real Time'

from the rewriting-history-multiple-times-per-hour dept

The word "historical" tends to conjure up images of musty buildings with plaques attached to them denoting the original construction and possibly who did what when, but several dozen years ago. While anything that happened just before right now could literally be termed "historical," most people tend to associate the word with things that happened well before the exact present.

Not so much the courts, though. "Historical" data involves anything not collected in "real time," apparently. The North Carolina Court of Appeals has ruled that something occuring at nearly any time before right now is "historical," even if the "history" itself traces back less than ten minutes.

Superior Court Judge Lucy N. Inman signed the order and Detective Mitchell submitted it to AT&T, the cellular phone service provider and holder of the account associated with the phone number. AT&T provided the records of the location of the cell phone tower “hits” or “pings” whenever a call was made to or from the cell phone. AT&T sent emails of the longitude and latitude coordinates of these historical cell tower “hits” to Detective Mitchell every fifteen minutes. Detective Mitchell testified an approximately five- to seven-minute delay occurred between the time the phone “pinged” a cell phone tower and the time AT&T received and calculated the location and sent the latitude and longitude coordinates to him.

This location info helped track the defendant to a motel and he was arrested shortly thereafter. The defendant sought to suppress the warrantless "search" of his cell phone and its location (obtained via a phone records production order that ran from a month before it was requested to two days after the request was granted [December 10, 2012]). The location data that traced the defendant back to the motel room was acquired (with a 5-7 minute delay) on December 11.

The defendant argued that the "real time" tracking of his location violated his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights (as well as analogous parts of North Carolina's constitution). The court doesn't buy these arguments, citing the Stored Communications Act, which allows government entities to obtain certain third party records without a warrant. It says the difference between what's been considered unconstitutional by several courts -- obtaining real-time location information with a tracking device -- isn't what's happening here.

It argues that because the police didn't intercept these "records," everything is above-board, even if the sought "historical" data included two days of "records" that were created after the court order was approved.

Several courts have held the SCA permits a government entity to obtain cell tower site location information from a third-party service provider in situations where the cell tower site location information sought pre-dates the court order and where the cell tower site location information is collected after the date the court order issues. Although the former may technically be considered “historical” while the latter is “prospective” in relation to the date of the court order, both are considered “records” under the SCA. The government entity only receives this information after it has been collected and stored by the third-party service provider.

In plainer English, this means law enforcement entities can seek "historical" records from the "future," with the mitigating factor being that the records are collected by third parties first. A short delay of a few minutes is enough to call these records "historical" under this interpretation.

In a slightly-dissenting concurrence, Judge C.J. McGee diagrees with the court's definition of "historical" records (while finding the overall opinion valid because of the good faith exception).

Because most federal courts recognize that historical cell site information consists of information generated prior to the issuance date of a judicial order that allowed law enforcement to obtain such records for a given defendant, and because I believe allowing the majority’s characterization of the information provided by AT&T to law enforcement, based on the facts in this case, would effectively obliterate the distinction between “historical” and “real-time” cell site information, I must respectfully disagree with the majority’s characterization.

McGee points to a few details that make this "historical" location data far more analogous to real-time tracking: the fact that the court order allowed for the acquisition of cell site location records for two days past the point of issuance, that the police and AT&T remained in constant contact during the tracking of the suspect and the same short delay ("5-7 minutes") that the majority declared made the records "historical."

While the majority's interpretation dilutes the meaning of "historical" by including location data yet to be generated under its warrantless wing, it does point out to possible future problems with the use of Stingray devices. These have often been deployed with the same sort of court orders, but contain the ability to track individual phones in real time. Once more details on these deployments come to light, the courts will be forced to confront a plethora of Fourth Amendment violations -- at least if they're going to remain consistent with this interpretation of "historical."

Filed Under: 4th amendment, cell site location info, csli, ecpa, law enforcement, north carolina, sca, stored communications act
Companies: at&t

Cop Invents Device That Sniffs MAC Addresses To Locate Stolen Devices

from the just-the-MACs,-ma'am dept

Law enforcement continues to look for a tech edge. (Whether it actually needs it as badly as it claims it does is still open to debate…) Techdirt reader Brig C. McCoy sends in news that an Iowa law enforcement officer is putting together yet another piece of in-car equipment -- one that will sniff MAC addresses to locate stolen electronics. (via Slashdot)

Next month, an Iowa City police officer will introduce technology at the International Association of Chiefs of Police Conference in Chicago that could help law enforcement recover Wi-Fi-capable devices.

[...]

Law enforcement officers using L8NT would plug the USB device into their in-car laptops. The device would scan MAC addresses, looking for matches to known stolen items. The device has a range of about 300 feet and can be attached to a directional antenna to allow police to determine where the signal is coming from and obtain a warrant.

Weirdly, the thing that it could do best (caveats forthcoming) isn't the thing Officer David Schwindt wants it to be used for. Sure, recovering the occasional stolen cellphone or tablet is cool. But you know what's really cool? Whatever the hell it is that Schwindt thinks it could be used for, but would rather not discuss in detail.

“I foresee law enforcement using L8NT software to solve higher-level crimes,” said Schwindt, a 14-year veteran of the department.

“If your cellphone is stolen from a bar ... that’s not necessarily what L8NT is intended for. But, if your home is burglarized and your cellphone is stolen, now, as a police chief, I’m interested” in that technology.

Even though it could be used passively to run MAC addresses against a hot sheet, it probably won't be. Instead, it will take a criminal act of more severity before officers will even think about plugging the device in. Or it could just be used to perform an "audit" of any home's electronic devices… because child porn is a problem.

Schwindt said the idea for the product came to him after taking a Small Office/Home Office investigations class. The class discussed child porn investigations and doing a “wireless audit” of a suspect’s residence to look for devices that would hold evidence and illegal material. The class taught investigators to scan for MAC addresses.

Schwint does point out that his invention won't be able to pick up any additional information sent from devices. It will only acquire the MAC address. (I imagine future law enforcement clients will soon be making efforts to take the governor off the data hauler...) Locating stolen devices via L8NT "wardriving" could lead to the recovery of more stolen electronics. Or it may prove mostly useless.

As is pointed out at Slashdot, MAC addresses can be easily spoofed. Once criminals know devices like this are in use, they could make more proactive efforts to alter addresses on purloined devices. The other issue is that a MAC address isn't really like a fingerprint: it isn't necessarily unique.

Manufacturers re-use MAC Addresses and they ship cards with duplicate addresses to different parts of the United States or the world so that there is only a very small chance two computers with network cards with the same MAC Address will end up on the same network.

Now, the odds are small that police will run into conflicting, duplicate addresses, but this fact makes it impossible to guarantee that tracking down a MAC address actually means tracking down a stolen device. For that reason alone, L8NT's architecture may be changed to grab more identifying info… which will lead to more questions about the constitutionality of the device, which will act like a low-level search of a home's electronics. Its impact will also be blunted by the information it seeks, considering not every device is assigned a MAC address and addresses are unobtainable unless they're turned on and connected to a Wi-Fi network.

I wouldn't necessarily bash this officer's idea, as it does achieve certain law enforcement goals without having to carve another slice out of the Fourth Amendment. But I'm hardly convinced this will remain a low-level surveillance device subject to built-in limitations. The best evidence for this is the officer's statements themselves. It's an electronics-sniffing device conceived during a discussion of child porn investigations and which has triggered happy visions of high-profile busts in its inventor's head. Nothing about that combination bodes well for the built-in limitations surviving future iterations of L8NT. Add in the fact that a MAC address isn't a perfect identifier and you've got a recipe for trouble.

Filed Under: iowa city police, law enforcement, mac address, stolen devices, surveillance

New Hampshire Library Rejects DHS Fearmongering, Turns Tor Back On

from the congrats! dept

Last week, we posted the story of how the Kilton Public Library in Lebanon, New Hampshire, had been pressured to turn off its Tor relay after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had reached out to the local police department to express concern over the library's decision, and freaking out because "criminals can use Tor." After being approached by the police, the library agreed to shut down the relay, while setting up a meeting to discuss if the library should turn it back on. Apparently, last week's press attention helped bring out lots of folks who very strongly supported turning Tor back on.

Boston librarian Alison Macrina, who runs the Library Freedom Project and helped the library set up Tor in the first place, was tweeting up a storm last night, and it sounded like a lot of people showed up to make it clear that (1) the DHS could go pound sand and (2) the library should turn its Tor node back on:

This is just about my favorite thing ever. pic.twitter.com/7qqSV3snqr

— Alison Macrina (@flexlibris) September 16, 2015

Multiple people apparently spoke about how this is absolutely the kind of project that libraries should support, and that protecting anonymous browsing was an important thing to have in the world. And, in the end, success:

#KiltonLibrary WE'VE DONE IT. THE KILTON LIBRARY WILL TURN THEIR #TOR RELAY BACK ON!!!

— Alison Macrina (@flexlibris) September 15, 2015

This is amazingly good news, and as Macrina noted after: "This was a public referendum about privacy, free speech, and what libraries do." And all three of those things came out winners.

Oh, and even better: it appears that the publicity around this and the success last night may be inspiring other libraries to set up their own Tor relays as well.

Filed Under: alison macrina, dhs, law enforcement, library, police, tor, tor relay
Companies: kilton public library

DOJ Helping Law Enforcement Agencies Fight Back Against Asset Forfeiture Reform

from the the-public's-best-interest-still-at-bottom-of-all-lists dept

At the beginning of this year, Attorney General Eric Holder attempted to close an exploitable loophole in asset forfeiture laws. State and local law enforcement agencies often sought federal "adoption" of seizures in order to route around statutes that dumped assets into general funds or otherwise limited them from directly profiting from these seizures. By partnering with federal agencies, local law enforcement often saw bigger payouts than with strictly local forfeitures.

The loophole closure still had its own loopholes (seizures for "public safety," various criminal acts), but it did make a small attempt to straighten out some really perverted incentives. But deep down inside, it appears the DOJ isn't really behind true forfeiture reform. In fact, it seems to be urging local law enforcement to fight these efforts by pointing out just how much money these agencies will "lose" if they can't buddy up with Uncle Sam.

A cache of documents uncovered by the Institute for Justice today demonstrate that federal law enforcement officials in the Departments of Justice (DOJ) and Treasury are collaborating with local law enforcement organizations in California to undermine efforts to reform the state’s civil forfeiture laws. The California District Attorneys Association is circulating a set of emails from officials with the DOJ and Treasury indicating that the federal government would disqualify the state from receiving funds from the federal Equitable Sharing Program if it passes the pending reforms. The documents also reveal that the DOJ has already disqualified New Mexico from participating in the program, following passage of a sweeping civil forfeiture reform bill this spring.

The DOJ's insertion into the legislative process begins with talking points delivered in emails that stress the amount of money agencies will be "losing" if they're no longer allowed to federalize seizures. The documents show members of the Treasury Department affirming that California's reform will "force" the DOJ to cut state law enforcement agencies out of the loop -- supposedly because the Mother Ship can't secure convictions fast enough.

Citing “resources, desire, or technical capability,” Treasury Executive Office for Asset Forfeiture Legal Counsel Melissa Nasrah wrote in an email to Santa Barbara Senior Deputy District Attorney Lee Carter, “I highly doubt our federal agencies can figure out whether a conviction occurred in any timely manner,” and “it seems the legislation, in effect, takes decision-making authority away from Treasury. Accordingly, I think I would still advise our policy officials here that it would be prudent to not share with CA agencies should this law be passed.”

Sure enough, the "warnings" from the feds are echoed in a letter from the California District Attorneys' Association in opposition of the bill. The association expresses its abject dismay at the fact that law enforcement agencies might actually have to secure convictions to hold onto seized assets. According to the CDAA, asset forfeiture without accompanying convictions is a must because indictments and jail time alone aren't punitive enough.

The current version of the bill would essentially deny every law enforcement agency in California direct receipt of any forfeited assets. California's asset forfeiture law will be changed for the worse, and it will cripple the ability of law enforcement to forfeit assets from drug dealers when arrest and incarceration is an incomplete strategy for combatting drug trafficking.

The Treasury Department, for its part, argues that a conviction requirement would prevent the DOJ from a) being fair and b) performing the studious oversight that has prevented asset forfeiture from devolving into cops going shopping for stuff they want.

A transfer to a state-controlled fund would not be a permissible use of funds, especially when that central fund would redistribute money to all law enforcement agencies in the state, regardless of their eligibility or participation in our program.

All participating agencies must report their expenditures to DOJ at the end of their fiscal year. As you are aware, there are many law enforcement items that cannot be purchased with equitably shared funds, and some are fully prohibited both by policy and executive order. lf a participating agency turns its federally shared funds over to the State of California under those proposed amendments, DOJ can no longer provide appropriate oversight over final expenditures.

The CDAA goes on to complain that the proposed reforms would reverse the one-way screwing it has become accustomed to.

The vast majority of civil narcotic asset forfeiture cases in California resolve by default or settlement. Providing attorney fees to the party that "substantially prevails" could result in attorney fees being available when the People return 50 percent or more of the seizure in a settlement. This would be an unprecedented one-way benefit for a civil litigant, and a huge additional cost to prosecuting forfeitures. Further, in appropriate cases and under existing civil law, attorney fees are already available to claimants in a forfeiture action.

Note the use of "the People" to portray this as robbing the public of the benefits of seized funds when, in actuality, it's usually just the theft of funds from (lowercase) people.

It's easy to see why California law enforcement is panicking. There's almost $84 million at stake, if the CDAA's stats are accurate. These agencies want to control how they get these funds, what they have to do to hold onto them and how they're disbursed. Anything short of the status quo is just a win for drug dealers. This is hardly unexpected behavior. Nothing makes government agencies more defensive than furtive movements in the direction of their wallets.

That the DOJ has decided to pile on -- despite its nominal reform efforts -- is also less than shocking. After all, it takes a cut from every "adopted" investigation -- all the while enabling local entities to bypass statutory safeguards meant to keep the abuse of civil forfeiture to a minimum.

Filed Under: asset forfeiture, doj, eric holder, law enforcement, legalized theft, reform

First Library To Support Tor Anonymous Internet Browsing Effort Stops After DHS Email

from the can't-have-anonymity dept

Since Edward Snowden exposed the extent of online surveillance by the U.S. government, there has been a surge of initiatives to protect users' privacy.

But it hasn't taken long for one of these efforts — a project to equip local libraries with technology supporting anonymous Internet surfing — to run up against opposition from law enforcement.

In July, the Kilton Public Library in Lebanon, New Hampshire, was the first library in the country to become part of the anonymous Web surfing service Tor. The library allowed Tor users around the world to bounce their Internet traffic through the library, thus masking users' locations.

Soon after state authorities received an email about it from an agent at the Department of Homeland Security.

"The Department of Homeland Security got in touch with our police department," said Sean Fleming, the library director of the Lebanon Public Libraries.

After a meeting at which local police and city officials discussed how Tor could be exploited by criminals, the library pulled the plug on the project.

"Right now we're on pause," said Fleming. "We really weren't anticipating that there would be any controversy at all."

He said that the library board of trustees will vote on whether to turn the service back on at its meeting on Sept. 15.

Used in repressive regimes by dissidents and journalists, Tor is considered a crucial tool for freedom of expression and counts the State Department among its top donors. But Tor has been a thorn in the side of law enforcement; National Security Agency documents made public by Snowden have revealed the agency's frustration that it could only identify a "very small fraction" of Tor users.

The idea to install Tor services in libraries emerged from Boston librarian Alison Macrina's Library Freedom Project, which aims to teach libraries how to "protect patrons' rights to explore new ideas, no matter how controversial or subversive, unfettered by the pernicious effects of online surveillance." (The Library Freedom Project is funded by Knight Foundation, which also provides funding to ProPublica.)

After Macrina conducted a privacy training session at the Kilton library in May, she talked to the librarian about also setting up a Tor relay, the mechanism by which users across the Internet can hide their identity.

The library board of trustees unanimously approved the plan at its meeting in June, and the relay was set up in July. But after ArsTechnica wrote about the pilot project and Macrina's plan to install Tor relays in libraries across the nation, law enforcement got involved.

A special agent in a Boston DHS office forwarded the article to the New Hampshire police, who forwarded it to a sergeant at the Lebanon Police Department.

DHS spokesman Shawn Neudauer said the agent was simply providing "visibility/situational awareness," and did not have any direct contact with the Lebanon police or library. "The use of a Tor browser is not, in [or] of itself, illegal and there are legitimate purposes for its use," Neudauer said, "However, the protections that Tor offers can be attractive to criminal enterprises or actors and HSI [Homeland Security Investigations] will continue to pursue those individuals who seek to use the anonymizing technology to further their illicit activity."

When the DHS inquiry was brought to his attention, Lt. Matthew Isham of the Lebanon Police Department was concerned. "For all the good that a Tor may allow as far as speech, there is also the criminal side that would take advantage of that as well," Isham said. "We felt we needed to make the city aware of it."

Deputy City Manager Paula Maville said that when she learned about Tor at the meeting with the police and the librarians, she was concerned about the service's association with criminal activities such as pornography and drug trafficking. "That is a concern from a public relations perspective and we wanted to get those concerns on the table," she said.

Faced with police and city concerns, library director Fleming agreed to turn off the Tor relay temporarily until the board could reconsider. "We need to find out what the community thinks," he said. "The only groups that have been represented so far are the police department and city hall."

Fleming said that he is now realizing the downside of being the first test site for the Tor initiative.

"There are other libraries that I've heard that are interested in participating but nobody else wanted to be first," he said. "We're lonesome right now."

Republished from ProPublica

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Filed Under: dhs, law enforcement, library, privacy, tor, tor browser
Companies: kilton public library

Canadian Police Chiefs: 'RESOLVED: The Warrant Requirement For ISP Subscriber Data Makes Our Job Harder. Please Fix.'

from the WHEREAS-whine-complain-bitch-moan dept

Canada's law enforcement agencies are still enduring the growing pains of having to respect the privacy and civil rights of Canadian citizens. It's apparently killing them.

At the peak of their power, Canadian law enforcement agencies were asking for ISP subscriber data every 27 seconds. Nearly 1.2 million requests were made in in 2011 alone. That number likely increased over the next couple of years before a Supreme Court decision brought this harvesting to a halt with the introduction of a warrant requirement in 2014 . Prior to that, the only thing keeping Canadian cops from requesting data at an even faster rate was the "five minutes of paperwork" occasionally demanded of them.

Since the warrant requirement went into effect, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have adopted two tactics to deal with the additional stipulations:

1. Complaining about it (using graphic child abuse imagery, of course).

2. Tossing cases.

Can't win. Won't try. That's the indomitable law enforcement spirit officials are always praising when asking for donations and votes.

The Canadian law enforcement community is now deploying the third prong of its attack on the inconvenience of securing warrants: a strongly-worded resolution backed by the collective power of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. (h/t Jordan Pearson at Vice)

According to the CACP, the government owes Canadian law enforcement immediate access to subscriber information at all times. The resolution begins with this assertion, which everyone is apparently supposed to treat as an long-acknowledged fact.

WHEREAS law enforcement requires real-time, or near real-time access to basic subscriber (customer name and address) information (BSI) as it relates to telecommunications’ customers for investigative reasons…

It then points out what the Supreme Court decision changed (officially recognized Canadian citizens' privacy interest in their own subscriber data) before complaining that ISPs are getting all uppity with them when they show up without a warrant.

WHEREAS since the Spencer decision, the telecommunications companies refuse to provide any basic subscriber information (BSI) in the absence of an exigent circumstance, or a judicial warrant or order, even where there exists no reasonable expectation of privacy…

Well, gee, if we leave the decision of where the "expectation of privacy" lies in the hands of law enforcement, we get what we already got: subscriber data requests every 27 seconds. So, we know law enforcement can't be trusted to make that decision.

And it's not the ISPs place to make "expectation of privacy" determinations. These companies should do what they're doing: demand warrants and court orders. But law enforcement views this as a form of obstruction, albeit a form supported by a court decision.

The resolution's next "WHEREAS" tosses out another assertion everyone's just supposed to agree with, because who's more trustworthy than a group of cops?

WHEREAS there exists no lawful authority designed specifically to require the provision of basic subscriber information, and the problems posed by this gap in the law are particularly acute where there exists no reasonable expectation of privacy in that information.

This complaint/assertion is basically: "We can't make ISPs do anything the law no longer compels them to do." That's kind of how laws are supposed to work. So, the problem is the ruling... and the solution is a legislative undoing of the court's ruling.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police supports the creation of a reasonable law designed to specifically provide law enforcement the ability to obtain, in real-time or near real-time, basic subscriber information (BSI) from telecommunications providers.

BE IT RESOLVED: legislative time machine. Law enforcement wants to go back to its pre-Supreme Court decision form, where demands were made (and met) quickly and with a minimum of paperwork or privacy considerations. Nowhere in the in-depth explanation of its "problem" and proposed resolution does it discuss a more limited framework for warrantless requests. The CACP wants the legislature to undo the terrible wrong it has suffered at the hands of the Supreme Court. There are no compromises offered. Canadian cops simply want to be able to freely demand subscriber info without having to jump through any privacy-protecting hoops.

Filed Under: canada, isp, law enforcement, metadata, privacy, subscriber info, warrants

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.

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.

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.

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.

Filed Under: baltimore, cell site simulators, imsi catchers, law enforcement, police, privacy, stingrays

Israeli-Made Stingray Device Found In The Hands Of South African Businessmen

from the snooping-for-the-masses! dept

IMSI catchers: not just for law enforcement agencies anymore! (via Slashdot) The cellphone signal-slurping devices are normally found in the hands of cops and investigators and carefully hidden from public examination by a fine mesh of redactions, withheld documents, non-disclosure agreements and dismissed cases. But two South African men walked into a sting operation, leaving behind an intriguing bit of interception equipment.

At 10am on Friday, [two people] were lured to Irene Mall outside Pretoria in a police and intelligence sting that resulted in their arrest for illegally being in possession of the cellphone-tapping, -tracking and -locator machine worth over R25 million.

The machine, specially installed in a German-made multi-purpose vehicle, was impounded.

The Star knows the identity of the two arrested men - a top businessman in the gold industry and a bank employee - but can only identify them once they have appeared in court.

The device recovered during this appears to be some sort of Stingray-esque device, albeit not one manufactured by Harris Corporation. Instead, "The Grabber" (as it's known) is manufactured in Israel. "The Grabber" is likely not its official name, as the web is largely free of other references to an IMSI catcher with this name. Israel's Rayzone Group offers a selection of interception devices, but so far, only one (the Pirahna) has any documentation that has surfaced publicly.

Like any powerful interception device, its sales are supposed to be limited to government agencies. From what's being reported here, the South African government was involved, but not in the typical way.

The Hawks [special investigative unit] said senior government officials are believed to have helped the suspects purchase the device – which is highly regulated in South Africa and globally.

According to the report, an official from the Department of Public Works is alleged to have written a fraudulent letter “on a government letterhead” claiming that the government wanted to buy the device.

Putting everything together from multiple reports, it appears the device was used (or intended to be used) to intercept communications of government officials overseeing certain lucrative bidding processes: small scale industrial/economic espionage by private persons acting on behalf of both themselves and a few government officials.

If the claims made by unnamed police officials are to be believed, the "Grabber" is possibly more powerful than Harris' Stingrays.

Police sources told The Star that evidence showed The Grabber, which could bug at least 10,000 lines at a time, had been used to advance certain parties in commercial transactions.

MyBroadband brings these claims a bit more down to earth with a longer examination of the device's purported capabilities. It appears to be, more or less, a Stingray. It imitates a cell tower and boosts its signal to route as many phone calls through it as possible. It can "grab" phones and track their location. According to the unnamed "security professional" interviewed by MyBroadband, it's unlikely the device can actually intercept calls, which makes the police sources' claims of "bugging 10,000 lines" particularly suspect.

In the abstract, a Stingray-device can gather any number of "lines," but actual interception (i.e., "bugging") of calls and text messages tends to be on a smaller scale. Whether or not this device can actually intercept communications (as the Stingray has been reported to do), it's likely true that it does have some interception capabilities, considering that in this context (snooping on government contract bidding, hints of blackmail) call records and phone location would be of minimal use.

Documentation on devices sold by Israel's Rayzone Group do hint at some powerful interception capabilities. Its "Pirahna" offers "remote control" of targeted devices, and additional software provides even more access via a targeted phone's WiFi connection.


However, there's not enough information available to ascertain exactly what device the South African police have recovered. But the technology has been around for years and a number of companies worldwide are steadily improving capabilities.

Finding one of these in the hands of private citizens is a bit surprising, but certainly can't be completely unexpected. Stingray-type technology was never going to remain under strict government control. The tech itself can be duplicated and utilized by criminals -- either by fraudulently obtaining a device from a manufacturer or by putting one together themselves. China's Amazon (AliBaba) has listings for IMSI catchers and Bruce Schneier points to researchers at 2010's Def Con displaying a home-built IMSI catcher that ran about $1,500 for parts. So, the capabilities the police feel they enjoy exclusively are undoubtedly in the hands of civilians.

What is remarkable is the circuitous nature of the criminal activity, which involved government insiders providing the paperwork needed for the acquisition, which was then deployed against other government officials to the mutual benefit of both.

Filed Under: imsi catcher, law enforcement, private use, south africa, stingray, surveillance
Companies: rayzone group

Another Journalist Claims UK Law Enforcement Violated Anti-Terrorism Laws By Putting Him Under Surveillance

from the there's-the-intention-and-then-there's-the-actual-application... dept

Well, now we know what the UK's anti-terrorism law does best. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) expanded powers for security/law enforcement agencies. For safety. For the nation. And, ironically, for the prevention the sort of thing it was recently amended to prevent. While it may occasionally be used to track down terrorists, it seems to be more often deployed by the watchers to watch those watching the watchers.

So far, multiple stories have emerged showing the law has been used to snoop on whistleblowers and journalists -- two entities consistently voted Least Likely to Participate in a Terrorist Attack. Critics said the law would be abused. It didn't take long to prove them right.

Yet another story of twisting RIPA to serve the state's own self-interest has emerged. William Turvill of the UK's Press Gazette has more details.

A BBC journalist suspects that Police Scotland snooped on him without judicial approval to try and find his sources while he was investigating the force.

Eamon O'Connor has claimed that a "very dependable source" believes he was targeted by the force's Counter Corruption Unit.

The revelation comes after the Sunday Herald quoted an inside source as saying that Police Scotland was one of two forces to have accessed phone records, under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), to find journalistic sources without judicial approval since the law was changed in March to prevent this.

And now an investigation unit is investigating the investigators. Police Scotland refuses to confirm or deny any of its people are under investigation by the Interception of Communications Commissioner's Office (IOCCO), but the oversight agency has confirmed that is in the middle of an investigation into these allegations.

O'Connor can't say for sure why he was targeted by the police but figures it has something to with his investigations into an unsolved killing that saw millions of pounds spent but no significant arrests or charges brought.

Police Scotland mounted a massive operation to catch Emma's killers. They spent £4m of the taxpayers' money and ended up charging four Turkish men with her murder. But the man was released and no trial took place.

"I made a Radio 4 documentary for File on Four earlier this year which highlighted a number of very serious problems with the way in which the original investigation was run. I can only assume that that has caused some concern inside Police Scotland.

This lack of details also makes it unclear whether the new RIPA stipulations have actually been abused or whether the police performed this surveillance under the old form. Presumably, this will all be sorted out by the IOCCO investigation. And, presumably, most of what it uncovers will be withheld from the public -- pretty much a given when alleged abuse of powers has a nexus with anti-terrorism laws.

O'Connor notes that he's not personally afraid of the police paying him extra attention in return for the "extra" attention he's paid to their actions. But he notes that this sort of thing can easily chill future examinations of police misconduct/failures.

"I'm not frightened for my personal safety or anything of that kind. But I do feel that this is likely to intimidate and impede whistleblowers and people who want to come forward to tell the truth about something they believe shouldn't have happened…

"If I'm intimidated or impeded from doing that, and my sources are intimidated and impeded from doing that because they fear they are being monitored, then proper journalism can't be done."

If so, then it would appear the unlawful snooping has done exactly what Police Scotland hoped it would: chill further examination of its incompetence.

Filed Under: chilling effects, eamon o'connor, journalism, law enforcement, ripa, surveillance, uk

Audits Of Asset Forfeiture Program Uncover Funds Used To Pay Student Loans, Property Used As Rent-Free Housing

from the stealing-our-way-to-justice! dept

Student loan debt is a serious problem here in the US as the price of higher education continues to outpace every standard economic yard stick. Lots of people think the government should step in to do something about it. While the administration makes helpful noises and tries to figure out how it can effectively tell Americans it's alright to rack up debt and walk away from it without actually, you know, encouraging Americans to get deeply in debt and walk away from it, one government employee is taking the bold steps the US government won't to eradicate student loan debt… specifically, his.

In a 2014 audit of the DA’s office representing Washington and Nowata counties [Oklahoma], the State Auditor’s Office found that $5,000 in forfeiture funds had been used to make payments on an assistant district attorney’s student loans.

That's a pretty egregious abuse of seized funds, and that's even if you find the whole asset forfeiture system mostly abuse-free when it comes to seizing property. Unbelievably, the DA's office defended the use of the public's money to pay off personal student loans.

The report said the district attorney maintained the expense was justified because most of the cases the assistant DA prosecuted were drug cases.

Which means what? That he was involved in several drug prosecutions and therefore entitled to a percentage of the take for his own personal use?

But no need to worry about the misspent $5,000. The DA's office has already "repaid" it using money seized a bit more lawfully via taxation.

After the issue came to light, the Oklahoma District Attorneys Council reimbursed the $5,000 using funds from its own student-loan program, the State Auditor’s report states.

So, everything's cool now. Except:

A 2009 audit of the District Attorney’s Office that represents Beaver, Cimarron, Harper and Texas counties found that a Beaver County assistant district attorney began living rent-free in a house obtained in a 2004 forfeiture. A judge had ordered the house sold at an auction, but the prosecutor lived there through 2009.

A bold new opportunity in real estate! Open to law enforcement members only!

There's so much more.

Schroedinger's seized pickup truck -- listed as "sold" at an auction -- remains in a sold/unsold state as neither the pickup, the paperwork nor the cash generated from the sale can be located. One district further perverted the perverse incentives by spending seized money before it had even been processed by the courts. In other instances, the money made its way onto the ledgers as "seized," but forfeiture cases were never filed. (This is particularly evil because without a filing, there's almost no way to challenge the seizure.)

The violations found by these audits are the sort of thing everyone should have expected when they allowed law enforcement to start seizing property without bringing criminal charges. Guns, vehicles and cash go missing. Proceeds from auctions are used to pay court costs and fund retirement parties. The program basically allows officers to steal from people they've already dehumanized as "drug traffickers." So, if someone's property goes missing and ends up as an off-the-books personal use vehicle/gun for some cop, no one's going to spend too much time worrying about the supposed "criminal" whose property has been seized. That's why the accountability is so lax and that's why the laws granting officers these powers need to be -- at minimum -- rewritten, if not taken off the books entirely.

And, as is always the case when asset forfeiture is attacked by legislators and regulators, there's a caricature of law enforcement on hand to offer homespun words of wisdom in defense of the legalized theft:

“I know for a fact we all try to work very hard to rid this devil’s candy (drugs) off of our state. And for someone to try and push us back — sheriff’s departments, police departments — that’s how we continue our fight, is to take that money and go forward,” Stradley said. “That will set us back many, many, many years.”

Will it set you back to 1990? And put you right in the middle of the crack epidemic? Or will it take you back to the 1920's, when marijuana was making jazz music tolerable and turning non-Caucasian males into rapists? How many years exactly will forcing Oklahoma law enforcement to accompany seizures with criminal charges set back these agencies? We all want to know. Even those of us who swore off the devil's candy years ago or never made it past anything harder than devil's food cake.

Filed Under: abuse, asset forfeiture, law enforcement, misuse, police, student loans