Exposed: A Secret Catalogue of Government Gear for Spying on Your Cellphone

[JEB]

The Intercept obtained the catalogue from a source within the intelligence community concerned about the militarization of domestic law enforcement.
by
Jeremy Scahill, The Intercept, Margot Williams, The Intercept

https://theintercept.com/2015/12/17/a-secret-catalogue-of-government-gear-for-spying-on-your-cellphone/

The Intercept has obtained a secret, internal U.S. government catalogue of dozens of cellphone surveillance devices used by the military and by intelligence agencies. The document, thick with previously undisclosed information, also offers rare insight into the spying capabilities of federal law enforcement and local police inside the United States.

<snip>

After being used by federal agencies for years, cellular surveillance devices began to make their way into the arsenals of a small number of local police agencies. By 2007, Harris sought a license from the Federal Communications Commission to widely sell its devices to local law enforcement, and police flooded the FCC with letters of support. “The text of every letter was the same. The only difference was the law enforcement logo at the top,” said Chris Soghoian, the principal technologist at the ACLU, who obtained copies of the letters from the FCC through a Freedom of Information Act request.

<snip>

Police often cite the war on terror in acquiring such systems. Michigan State Police claimed their Stingrays would “allow the State to track the physical location of a suspected terrorist,” although the ACLU later found that in 128 uses of the devices last year, none were related to terrorism. In Tacoma, Washington, police claimed Stingrays could prevent attacks using improvised explosive devices — the roadside bombs that plagued soldiers in Iraq. “I am not aware of any case in which a police agency has used a cell-site simulator to find a terrorist,” said Lynch. Instead, “law enforcement agencies have been using cell-site simulators to solve even the most minor domestic crimes.”

<snip>

In November, a federal judge in Illinois published a legal memorandum about the government’s application to use a cell-tower spoofing technology in a drug-trafficking investigation. In his memo, Judge Iain Johnston sharply criticized the secrecy surrounding Stingrays and other surveillance devices, suggesting that it made weighing the constitutional implications of their use extremely difficult. “A cell-site simulator is simply too powerful of a device to be used and the information captured by it too vast to allow its use without specific authorization from a fully informed court,” he wrote

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Runaway militarization of local police trample citizen rights.

https://theintercept.com/2015/12/17/a-secret-catalogue-of-government-gear-for-spying-on-your-cellphone/

[cantbeserious]

1. Thank You For Sharing These Truths

eom

[AzDar]

2. K & R

[2naSalit]

3. Big, Fat K&R!!

[JDPriestly]

4. What fun. I can just imagine the confusion at the FBI or the CIA when they read my texts

to my daughter when I babysit her little one.

8:30 a.m. Three prunes and oatmeal.


10:30 a.m. Pooped. Lots. What a mess!

12:00 Napping.

1:30 Up and going to park.

What fun they must have snooping on people, especially people who are caring for little people.

Most of the phone communications in this world are utterly boring.

Only a fool would plan a crime over the phone or internet in this day and age.

What a waste of money on all these spying materials.

The rare criminal or terrorist will be lost in the noise of the babysitting grandmothers, tort-suing lawyers, consoling and consulting doctors, teenagers (who use the phones and internet more than the rest of us combined) and telemarketers.

What a waste. Really. I guess it is just fun to create all these snooping devices whether they are useful or not.

If I wanted to catch terrorists or criminals, I think I would send real people to stand outside gun stores and maybe hardware and drug stores where people might buy ammunition and guns in large quantities or might buy ingredients for bombs (whatever they may be and I always wonder what they are because I don't want to be caught buying something that makes me look suspicious -- as if that were possible).

Anyway, what a waste. But I bet it's fun for the people who do the snooping. They probably feel themselves to be very special, privileged and important.

Anyway just knowing the snooping is occurring makes me less likely to feel free. And in America, feeling free is certainly a very dangerous things these days. Or is it?

[Octafish]

5. What Civil Rights?

Thank you for the heads-up, JEB. We live in the interesting times of Orwell:

The hobnailed boot smashing down on the face of humanity forever and all -- thanks to spy technology We the People pay for and enjoy the privilege of having turned on us.

This is a Police State.