Unredacted User Manuals Of Stingray Device Show How Accessible Surveillance Is

[friendly_iconoclast]

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/09/12/1934225/unredacted-user-manuals-of-stingray-device-show-how-accessible-surveillance-is

The Intercept has today published 200-page documents revealing details about Harris Corp's Stingray surveillance device, which has been one of the closely guarded secrets in law enforcement for more than 15 years. The firm, in collaboration with police clients across the U.S. have "fought" to keep information about the mobile phone-monitoring boxes from the public against which they are used. The publication reports that the surveillance equipment carries a price tag in the "low six figures." From the report:


The San Bernardino Sheriff's Department alone has snooped via Stingray, sans warrant, over 300 times. Richard Tynan, a technologist with Privacy International, told The Intercept that the "manuals released today offer the most up-to-date view on the operation of" Stingrays and similar cellular surveillance devices, with powerful capabilities that threaten civil liberties, communications infrastructure, and potentially national security. He noted that the documents show the "Stingray II" device can impersonate four cellular communications towers at once, monitoring up to four cellular provider networks simultaneously, and with an add-on can operate on so-called 2G, 3G, and 4G networks simultaneously.

There's a video, as well:

http://vimeo.com/182441890

The control software can be operated from almost any Windows computer.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. I thought there were laws against

listening in on phone conversations without a warrant.

Silly me to expect police departments to be law-abiding.

[MineralMan]

2. Does this system actually monitor actual conversations?

I don't think it does. I think it simply locates devices and tracks them. I don't believe it is able to monitor actual conversations or texts.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

3. Even if that's all they're doing,

it doesn't strike me as entirely legal.

[Warren DeMontague]

4. They would set these things up in the parking lot of Phish concerts, and wait for stuff like

Wookie T. Wookerton to text his buddy "meet me under the lot H sign and we'll smoke a bowl"

Then when Wookie T. Wookerton and his buddy show up for their dangerously criminal act of marijuana use, they would have the SWAT team descend on them.



Your tax dollars at work.

[Taitertots]

5. Its actually getting hilarious how corrupt and criminal the U.S. has become

The government literally flies fake cell phone towers over my house to listen to my phone calls.

The truth is so outrageous you'd be called a conspiracy nut if they didn't admit that's what they do.