Posted on 08/27/2017 6:32:57 PM PDT by BenLurkin
StingRay, a powerful surveillance device that imitates the function of a cell tower and captures the signals of nearby phones, allowing law enforcement officers to sweep through hundreds of messages, conversations and call logs.
The secrecy around the technology, which can ensnare the personal data of criminals and bystanders alike, spurred lawsuits and demands for public records to uncover who was using it and the extent of its capabilities. In California, a 2015 law requires law enforcement agencies to seek permission at public meetings to buy the devices, and post rules for their use online.
But a Los Angeles Times review of records from 20 of the state’s largest police and sheriff’s departments, plus the Alameda County district attorney’s office, found some agencies have been slow to follow or have ignored the law. Several that partner with federal agencies to work on cases are not subject to the law’s reporting requirements. The result is that little information on StingRay use is available to the public, making it hard to determine how wide a net the surveillance tools cast and what kind of data they gather.
...
[S]ome stingray policies posted by the law enforcement agencies revealed little about the devices besides noting they were in use. Other agencies took months to post their stingray guidelines online. The Los Angeles Police Department, which owns a stingray, updated its public safety policies to include its stingray guidelines only after questions from The Times.
Data on stingray purchases and use have long been difficult to come by, a problem the 2015 law requiring more public accountability was meant to correct — and has yet to fix.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Cops SLOW to follow the law, huh..?
I’m sure THAT won’t rub off on the good-natured, SUCKER public, right..?
Shucks, we’ll NEVER be like Venezuela, right..?
Dude, the cops have been murdering, stealing, lying, and doing all sorts of nasty things for decades. But for some reason the people love the police. It boggles my mind.
Cell phones offer as much privacy as a CB radios.
I intentionally use a cell phone as little as humanely possible. It’s all monitored/recorded.
Er....Humanely too~
Where’s the guy who used to peddle Apple phones? He was always insisting those devises are totally secure...lol
Devices too!...I have to bring it back down to 85 wpm. Fingers are faster than the brain.
Hmmmm
Is there some way to jam, or overwhelm these stingrays?
Send a strong signal, of some kind of random info (or DNC e-mails) so the stingray will suck it up.
Or, use your imagination . . .
ANOTHER GOOD REASON FOR ME NOT TO OWN A DAMN CELL PHONE!!!!
And I don’t.
Monitored, yes. Recorded, probably not. Ever since the invention of the telegraph, communications have easily been intercepted and monitored. Easy to tap old household hardlines. I had a portable handset that was able to listen in on neighbors calls, by standing under overhead telephone wires. Not that I dwelled on doing so, just found it curious. When I was in I.T. networking I had network sniffers monitoring traffic and saw everything people were sending. A department director wanted me to entrap people because of their emails and I refused, and told him any traffic can be modified and spoofed to hide the sender (true).
As long as there is the means, authorities will abuse the ability to spy on citizens. And abuse, it is.
If they couldn’t record it, they couldn’t glean any evidence to prosecute anyone.
Theoretically, authorities need a search warrant to record traffic in order to prosecute. But who says they necessarily get a search warrant. By monitoring the traffic (illegally), they see or hear evidence to implicate and then push for the means to grab someone (by warrant or other means) which will include recording. It's all very dirty, but they do it.
Search warrant or no search warrant, the fact remains, it can all easily be recorded for documentary evidence.
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