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from the the-surveillance-that-never-sleeps dept.
Shaun Nichols over at The Register (El Reg) is reporting on a New York Civil Liberties Union report (NYCLU) detailing New York City Police Department (NYPD) use of IMSI catchers.
According to the NYCLU's report, the NYPD has used IMSI catchers (essentially mobile cell towers powerful enough to induce all nearby cellular devices to connect to them, rather than commercial cell towers) more than 1,000 times in the past seven years.
From the El Reg article:
According to the NYCLU report, between 2008 and May of 2015 police used stingray hardware 1,016 times, and that permission to deploy the devices required a court order rather than a harder-to-obtain warrant.
The use of stingray devices by police has become a point of contention between law enforcement and groups who see the devices as a violation of personal privacy. Long used by the FBI, stingray devices impersonate legit cellphone towers to monitor nearby mobile phones and track their movements.
[...] "If carrying a cell phone means being exposed to military-grade surveillance equipment, then the privacy of nearly all New Yorkers is at risk," said NYCLU executive director Donna Lieberman.
"Considering the NYPD's troubling history of surveilling innocent people, it must at the very least establish strict privacy policies and obtain warrants prior to using intrusive equipment like Stingrays that can track people's cell phones."
This kind of gives a little more zing to the old saw "Welcome to New York. Now go home."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Saturday February 13 2016, @04:32AM
You have to wonder why they deploy them so often.
Unless they are looking for specific phone numbers and passing all the others off to legitimate cell towers the simple density of cell phones in NYC is so large that they would drown in all the data they could collect just about anywhere in the city.
I have to believe there is a mode that Stingrays can be set to operate in where in it looks only for specific phone numbers or sim cards, and just refuses connections to all the others.
In any event, I've been thinking its time to get ahold of our police. There is absolutely no reason a municipal police police should hold ANY secret means, methods, tools, or weapons.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Saturday February 13 2016, @03:37PM
I agree with you. I'm still waiting for Rahm Emmanuel to be dragged to the guillotine for running a black site [theguardian.com] in Chicago. Sadly, think it's going to be a long time since American zeal for freedom has run out.
Washington DC delenda est.