Sunday, March 23, 2014

"Police Keep Quiet About Cell-Tracking Technology"

"Police across the country may be intercepting phone calls or text messages to find suspects using a technology tool known as Stingray. But they're refusing to turn over details about its use or heavily censoring files when they do."
Police say Stingray, a suitcase-size device that pretends it's a cell tower, is useful for catching criminals, but that's about all they'll say.

For example, they won't disclose details about contracts with the device's manufacturer, Harris Corp., insisting they are protecting both police tactics and commercial secrets. The secrecy - at times imposed by nondisclosure agreements signed by police - is pitting obligations under private contracts against government transparency laws...

A Stingray device tricks all cellphones in an area into electronically identifying themselves and transmitting data to police rather than the nearest phone company's tower. Because documents about Stingrays are regularly censored, it's not immediately clear what information the devices could capture, such as the contents of phone conversations and text messages, what they routinely do capture based on how they're configured or how often they might be used.
So, it's not just the NSA tracking our cell phone use now. It could be anybody.

6 comments:

Shouting Thomas said...

Privacy is impossible.

Fortunately, I am an acknowledged sinner and general all around whoremonger.

The best defense is to have no reputation to protect!

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

I'll turn my self in, in exchange for a charge of a "blog" of interest.

The Dude said...

Slow your roll, hoss, you will die a free man.

edutcher said...

Maybe they'll start spying on each other.

bagoh20 said...

"A Stingray device tricks all cellphones in an area into electronically identifying themselves and transmitting data to police rather than the nearest phone company's tower."

Does that mean they might redirect a 911 call and let someone die? We got a lawsuit.

Although the Constitution seems pretty clear to me, we might need a Constitutional Amendment to reaffirm the Bill of Rights and make it clear who is boss up in this thing.

Michael Haz said...

A good hacker should be able to tell the perps where Stingray is set up.

Sithgray is just a portable version of the "where's that phone" exercise LEOs already go through when they are trying to locate a bad guy by tracking his/her cell phone's location via multiple towers.

People still can have privacy, but not if they carry a phone.