SoylentNews

NotSanguine [soylentnews.org] writes:

Dept suggestion: the-surveillance-that-never-sleeps

Shaun Nichols over at El Reg is reporting [theregister.co.uk] on a New York Civil Liberties Union report [nyclu.org] (NYCLU) detailing New York City Police Department [nyc.gov] (NYPD) use of IMSI catchers [wikipedia.org].

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:

Police in New York City used stingray mobile phone trackers on more than one thousand occasions since 2008.

So says the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), which obtained records from NYPD detailing their use of the devices while investigating cases.

According to the NYCLU report [nyclu.org], 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.

The NYCLU says its report shows police have been relying too heavily on stingray surveillance and, in the process, violating the privacy of citizens in the Big Apple.

"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."

The NYCLU suggests that the NYPD should "at a minimum" change its policy to require officers to obtain a warrant prior to deploying a stingray device.

This kind of gives a little more zing to the old saw "Welcome to New York. Now go home."

Original Submission