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The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico has sued the city of Albuquerque, seeking records by the city's police department about its use of stingrays, also known as cell-site simulators.
In May 2017, the ACLU of New Mexico filed a public records request to the Albuquerque Police Department (which has been under federal monitoring for years), seeking a slew of information about stingrays. The requested info included confirmation on whether the police had stingrays, "policies and procedures," and contracts with the Harris Corporation, among other materials. Albuquerque denied many of these requests, citing a state law that allows some public records to be withheld on the grounds that they reveal "confidential sources, methods." So, last week, the ACLU of New Mexico sued.
As Ars has been reporting for years, stingrays are used by law enforcement to determine a mobile phone's location by spoofing a cell tower. In some cases, stingrays can intercept calls and text messages. Once deployed, the devices intercept data from a target phone along with information from other phones within the vicinity. At times, police have falsely claimed the use of a confidential informant when they have actually deployed these particularly sweeping and intrusive surveillance tools. Often, they are used to locate criminal suspects.
A lawyer for the police department did not immediately respond to Ars' request for comment.
APD spokeswoman Celina Espinoza told the Albuquerque Journal in a statement that the department "follows legal standards with the use of any technology," but did not answer further questions.
Source: Ars Technica
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday July 12 2017, @01:53PM
"The spectrum analyzer not so much, but if you capture and try to decode then good luck."
Not sure about that. Maybe it's just a matter of terminology? You can own any radio RECIEVER, and you can capture, even record, anything on the airwaves. Now, the decoding is tricky. The police will tell you that it is illegal to own a decoder. Of course, the police will tell you a lot of things, right? "Encrypted" police radio traffic isn't really encrypted, so you're out of the woods on the encryption bit. I've always understood that it is illegal to decrypt radio traffic, but I'm not finding anything on the internet to back that up. Anyway - they aren't encrypting, so you don't need to decrypt.
Some info in this video: https://www.quora.com/Why-are-local-police-departments-encrypting-their-radio-networks-is-this-legal [quora.com]
More info here, regarding encryption, or the lack thereof: https://www.quora.com/Why-are-local-police-departments-encrypting-their-radio-networks-is-this-legal [quora.com]
Ultimately, the states, counties, and cities HAVE NO AUTHORITY OVER THE CAPTURE OF RADIO TRAFFIC. The airwaves are controlled by the federal government, specifically the FCC.
The right to listen to the police goes hand in hand with the right to record video of the police. Cops have told us for decades that recording a cop on the job is illegal - but the courts are slowly putting that issue right. If you can see a cop, you can record him. We need a few court cases to establish that if a cop is speaking on the air, you can listen to him.