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NEWS AND VIEWS THAT IMPACT LIMITED CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with
power to endanger the public liberty." - - - - John Adams

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Cellphone spying technology being used throughout Northern California

This graphic illustrates how a StingRay works. Signals from cellphones within the device's radius are bounced to law enforcement. The information relayed may include names, phone numbers, locations, call records and even text messages.
(Photo - News10 Sacramento)

We are ruled over by mad men
If you listen carefully, in the dead of night you
can hear the jackboots marching.


(ABC News Sacramento)  -  The Sacramento County Sheriff's Department may be keeping judges, prosecutors and the public in the dark about the use of a controversial electronic surveillance tool known as the StingRay, according to new information obtained by News10.

Despite evidence showing the sheriff's department is utilizing the device, the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office and Sacramento Superior Court judges said they have no knowledge of StingRays or similar tools being used in Sacramento.
Asshole Alert!
Sacramento Sheriff Scott Jones
appears to be spying on people's
phones without a warrant.

This revelation is concerning to privacy advocates and defense attorneys. They say the intrusive nature of the device, which tracks people in their homes and collects data from third parties, requires a search warrant. The fact that judges and prosecutors haven't heard of this use could indicate that warrants to use a StingRay aren't being obtained.

The district attorney's office said they would expect to see a search warrant for any device capable of real-time location tracking.

"We request a search warrant in all of those cases," Sacramento County Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Grippi said. He said while warrants for a wiretap or GPS tracking devices are fairly common, he has never seen a Stingray warrant.

The sheriff's department won't acknowledge they own the surveillance tool or talk about how it works. They also won't discuss who is targeted with it or what oversight mechanisms are in place to govern its use.

A News10 investigation in March showed the spying device is being used by at least nine local law enforcement agencies in California, from San Diego to Sacramento.

A StingRay is a brand of IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) catcher, a device that mimics a cell tower and attracts all wireless phone signals within a certain radius into connecting with it. Authorities can use it to track the location of phones in real time, as well as the unique ID and phone numbers of all connected phones and the numbers dialed by a connected phone. That includes the phone numbers of outgoing calls and text messages.

StingRays also can be configured to capture the content of calls and texts connected to the device, although Harris Corporation, the maker of Stingray and similar products, said devices used by law enforcement don't have that capability.


Linda Lye, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Northern California, spent several years battling federal and local authorities for StingRay records. Lye reviewed documents and other evidence obtained by News10 and believes the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department is almost certainly using a StingRay, and likely with little to no oversight.

"There's no California law governing how StingRays are to be used," Lye said. "It means law enforcement is using them under rules that they have unilaterally written."

Over the past six months the sheriff's department has denied multiple requests from News10 to discuss the technology.

Privacy advocates such as the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation argue that a non-disclosure agreement between the sheriff's department and a private corporation is not a valid reason to withhold public records.

"Government agencies cannot enter into private contracts in order to evade their statutory obligations," Lye said.

The sheriff's department later refused to release additional records requested by News10, citing several federal regulations, including the Freedom of Information Act, the Homeland Security Act, International Traffic in Arms Regulations and the Arms Export Control Act.

Read More . . . .


Stingray Tower Collects Private Info Without A Warrant




“He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.”  
George Orwell
1984    

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