Police across the country are using fake mobile base stations (StingRay) to spy on citizens
As the ACLU suspected, local law enforcement officials are borrowing cell phone tracking devices known as “stingrays” from the U.S. Marshals Service—and police are deliberately concealing the use of stingrays in court documents submitted to judges in criminal investigations.
The ACLU of Florida released a set of internal police emails obtained today through a public records request with the subject line “Trap and Trace Confidentiality.” The documents confirm that local police, working on state court matters, hide behind the sham cloak of the U.S. Marshals’ office to keep the information about stingray use out of court files—and beyond even a court’s custody and reach.
When contacted by the Wall Street Journal, the US Marshals Service refused to comment.
In the email exchange, a Sarasota Police Department sergeant wrote that in a warrant application to a judge, a North Port Police Department detective had “specifically outlined the investigative means used to locate the suspect,” and the sergeant asked that the detective “submit a new PCA [probable cause affidavit] and seal the old one.” In other words, fix the old affidavit and keep the use of the stingray equipment secret.
The sergeant also wrote, “In the past, and at the request of the U.S. Marshalls, the investigative means utilized to locate the suspect have not been revealed so that we may continue to utilize this technology without the knowledge of the criminal element. In reports or depositions we simply refer to the assistance as ‘received information from a confidential source regarding the location of the suspect.’ To date this has not been challenged…”
In a later email, a North Port PD official wrote, “We have implemented within our detective bureau to not use this investigative tool on our documents in the future.”
Concealing the use of stingrays deprives defendants of their right to challenge unconstitutional surveillance and keeps the public in the dark about invasive monitoring by local police. And local and federal law enforcement should certainly not be colluding to hide basic and accurate information about their practices from the public and the courts.
There is an underground market for illegal telecoms equipment, much of which comes from China.
The equipment can be used to pretend to be a mobile base station, tricking all users' phones to connect to it as they pass close to areas where the fake base station is located.
In addition to transmitting a mobile phone user's location and identifying information, data from text messages can easily be intercepted using an SMS server, without the user's mobile operator or the user themselves being any the wiser.
In March, Chinese authorities arrested a total of 1,530 suspects in a crackdown on spam text messages, and found that there were 3,540 cases of suspected crimes, with some of the scams run by gangs in various cities.
Around the same time, local TV station Sacramento News 10 submitted public information requests to all the major law enforcement agencies in Northern California.
By piecing together information from a 2012 federal grant application from the San Jose police department, the TV station discovered that StingRay has been used by the San Jose Police, US Marshals Service, Oakland Police Department, Sacramento Sheriff's Department, San Diego Sheriff's Department, Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department.
"We will work with the Fusion Center to partner with San Francisco and Oakland to ensure we have the ability to cover all of the Bay Area in deploying cell phone tracking technology in any region of the Bay Area at a moment's notice," the application said.
The San Jose Police Department said that it had consulted with the Sacramento Sheriff's Department about how it was using StingRay.
News 10 spoke to the Sacramento District Attorney's Office and was told that no judge had approved warrants using the device. Warrant applications filed by the Sacramento Police Department also showed that the police department had never divulged that it was using the device to track suspects.
None of the police departments mentioned have admitted to using the devices, and the worry is that a wide amount of data is being collected about citizens who are not under suspicion of committing a crime.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/stingray-us-police-have-used-fake-mobile-base-stations-spy-citizens-1458693
FBI & law enforcement across the country claim online messaging services are thwarting surveillance of citizens:
Federal law enforcement and intelligence authorities say they are increasingly struggling to conduct court-ordered wiretaps on suspects because of a surge in chat services, instant messaging and other online communications that lack the technical means to be intercepted.
At least 4,000 companies in the United States provide some form of communication service, and a “significant portion” are not required by law to make sure their platforms are wiretap-ready, Hess said. Among the types of services that were unthinkable not long ago are photo-sharing services, which say they allow users to send photos that are automatically deleted, and peer-to-peer Internet phone calls, for which there are no practical means for interception.
Although online communication services are not required to build in intercept capabilities, the law requires them to provide “technical assistance” to an official with a valid intercept order, which requires a judge to find probable cause that the surveillance will yield evidence of a crime. But the phrase “technical assistance” is vague, permitting different interpretations.
A “large percentage” of wiretap orders to pick up the communications of suspected spies and foreign agents are not being fulfilled, FBI officials said. Law enforcement agents are citing the same challenge in criminal cases; agents, they say, often decline to even seek orders when they know firms lack the means to tap into a suspect’s communications in real time.
“It’s a significant problem, and it’s continuing to get worse,” Amy S. Hess, executive assistant director of the FBI’s Science and Technology Branch, said in a recent interview.
One former U.S. official said that each year “hundreds” of individualized wiretap orders for foreign intelligence are not being fully executed because of a growing gap between the government’s legal authority and its practical ability to capture communications — a problem that bureau officials have called “going dark.”
The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts has issued the 2013 Wiretap Report, detailing the use of surveillance authorities by law enforcement agencies.
This annual report, one of the most comprehensive issued by any agency, provides an insight into the debate over surveillance authorities and the use of privacy-enhancing technologies.
In 2013, wiretap applications increased 5%, from 3,576 to 3,395. Authorities encountered encryption during 41 investigations, but encryption prevented the government from deciphering messages in only 9 cases.
This statistic contradicts claims that law enforcement agencies are "going dark" as new technologies emerge. Of the 3,074 individuals arrested based on wiretaps in 2013, only 709 individuals were convicted based on wiretap evidence.
WHY ARE FISA COURT JUDGES BUYING VERZON SHARES?
It seems that the various judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) who keep approving the NSA's requests for bulk data from telecomms... also seem to keep buying Verizon stock.
On May 28 last year, Judge James Zagel, a FISA Court member since 2008, purchased stock in Verizon. In June of this year, Zagel signed off on a government request to the FISA Court to renew the ongoing metadata collection program.
He's not the only one. We filed a request to the courts for the personal finance statements for all of the FISA Court judges. About a month ago, federal judges began turning in their disclosures, which cover the calendar year of 2013. The disclosures show that FISA Court Judge Susan Wright purchased Verizon stock valued at $15,000 or less on October 22. FISA Court Judge Dennis Saylor has owned Verizon stock, and last year collected a dividend of less than $1,000. The precise amount and value of each investment is unclear—like many government ethics disclosures, including those for federal lawmakers, investments amounts are revealed within certain ranges of value.
"I think prudence would suggest that a FISA judge would not acquire investments in these telecommunication stocks," says Professor William G. Ross, an expert on judicial ethics at Samford University's Cumberland School of Law in Alabama. "I'm not saying there is a conflict of interest, which my impression says there's probably not," Ross says, adding, "this is between what's improper and what's prudent." And, indeed, there definitely appears to be a conflict of interest here. As you may recall, it's been reported that the telcos were given over $100 million for "volunteering" to hand over customer records. While that may be peanuts overall to a major telco's bottom line, it's not nothing.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/proliferation-of-new-online-communications-services-poses-hurdles-for-law-enforcement/2014/07/25/645b13aa-0d21-11e4-b8e5-d0de80767fc2_story.html
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140725/16162828012/fisa-court-judges-keep-buying-verizon-stock-wonder-what-they-know.shtml
With Liberty To Monitor All: How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming Journalism, Law and American Democracy
The ACLU and Human Rights Watch have compiled the report based on interviews with scores of high profile reporters and attorneys. The survey serves as proof that the protection of private information and sources is “increasingly scarce and difficult to ensure” due to government espionage.
“As a result, journalists and their sources, as well as lawyers and their clients, are changing their behavior in ways that undermine basic rights and corrode democratic processes,” the report notes.
Whistleblowers and reporters are now increasingly censoring themselves, meaning that important information regarding government corruption or mismanagement remains hidden from the public.
The rights groups argue that this is clear evidence of the restriction of freedom of speech.
“Journalists told us that officials are substantially less willing to be in contact with the press, even with regard to unclassified matters or personal opinions, than they were even a few years ago,” the report states.
“In turn, journalists increasingly feel the need to adopt elaborate steps to protect sources and information, and eliminate any digital trail of their investigations,” the survey found, indicating that reporters are increasingly using encryption methods for electronic communications, or avoiding them altogether, as well as employing disposable cell phones.
Some reporters have given up altogether on pursuing leads because “If the government wants to get you, they will,” as Washington Post reporter Adam Goldman notes.
Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman, also notes that in the past the government wasn’t able to effectively undermine investigative journalism, but all that has now changed. “It used to be that leak investigations didn’t get far because it was too hard to uncover the source, but with digital tools it’s just much easier, and sources know that.” Gellman states.
New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer adds that sources are now “afraid of the entire weight of the federal government coming down on them.”
“The added layer of fear makes it so much harder. I can’t count the number of people afraid of the legal implications [of speaking to me].” Mayer notes.
Other reporters expressed concern that secrecy and corruption will thrive in such conditions.
The rights groups also argue that the right to counsel, protected under the Sixth-Amendment, is also being undermined as lawyers are being impeded from communicating confidentially with clients due to government spying.
“Given the now publicly admitted revelations that there is no privacy in communications, including those between attorneys and their clients, I feel ethically obligated to tell all clients that I can’t guarantee anything [they] say is privileged … or will remain confidential,” urges Linda Moreno, a defense attorney specializing in national security and terrorism cases.
“If the US fails to address these concerns promptly and effectively,” report author G. Alex Sinha writes, “it could do serious, long-term damage to the fabric of democracy in the country.”
Four Senators raise alarm about NSA collection of Americans’ e-mails, phone calls.
Four senators have sent a letter to the director of national intelligence expressing concerns about the scope of the collection of Americans’ e-mails and phone calls under a National Security Agency program that targets foreigners overseas.
The lawmakers, led by Jon Tester (D-Mont.), told Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. that they were concerned by recent reports by The Washington Post and an independent executive branch panel about the surveillance.
The Post examined 160,000 communications intercepted under the program, which was authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as amended in 2008. The law does not require individualized warrants.
The Post found that “nearly half of the surveillance files . . . contained names, e-mail addresses or other details that the NSA marked as belonging to U.S. citizens or residents.”
“This revelation raises significant doubts about whether we are striking the right balance between securing our nation and upholding the privacy and civil liberties of our citizens,” the senators wrote in the letter, which was dated Thursday.
Click here to read more.
A group of 29 artists signed on to the following open letter urging congressional leaders to take action to stop dragnet NSA surveillance. The plea comes months after a PEN American study found that 1 in 6 authors surveyed "avoided writing or speaking on a topic they thought would subject them to surveillance." Nearly one in three has "curtailed or avoided social media activities" in the face of omnipresent government monitoring.