Stingrays are fake cell towers. Rather than connect calls or texts, they collect them for whatever law enforcement agency bought the device. One would imagine such a device would be unnecessary in the land of the free. A warrant issued to a phone company could procure the same information without the taxpayer-funded expense of purchasing, deploying, powering, and maintaining complex telecommunications equipment in the form of a shadow mobile network explicitly for spying. That would assume that the government actually obeyed the 4th Amendment to the Constitution. Worse yet, stingrays are used for mass surveillance. Why else would agencies deploy them when the same information on a single person is an easy-to-obtain warrant away.
Noting that stingrays amount to mass, warrantless surveillance, the Senate Judiciary Committee had a private briefing with the FBI. The FBI’s response as captured by Senate Grassley is priceless:
For example, we understand that the FBI’s new policy requires FBI agents to obtain a search warrant whenever a cell-site simulator is used as part of a FBI investigation or operation, unless one of several exceptions apply, including (among others): (1) cases that pose an imminent danger to public safety, (2) cases that involve a fugitive, or (3) cases in which the technology is used in public places or other locations at which the FBI deems there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.
But this is a wireless technology. So the FBI can setup a stingray down the block in a “public place” and capture all the texts sent from your livingroom. And who determines what public “is” for the FBI? The FBI. More details at Ars Technica.
9:01 am on January 7, 2015
