Your secret Stingray is not so secret anymore
December 17, 2015 7:41 PM   Subscribe

 
What's even sadder is that these agencies are being ripped off. $75K? There's like maybe a couple thousand bucks of COTS radio parts and the rest is just spoofing GSM telling handsets to connect with zero encryption or A5/1. Like holy shit if Google was subcontracted to do this shit they'd probably find a way to use SDR or something to lower the price of the radios even further. Not only are we being illegally spied upon but the fuckers coming up with this tech are making bank while helping the government to piss all over us.
posted by Talez at 8:09 PM on December 17, 2015 [24 favorites]


but the fuckers coming up with this tech are making bank

The fuckers are always making bank. Which I'm sure is far from incidental to the overall pathology, but I'm not sure I'd say it's the sadder thing than the surveillance itself.

This piece was pretty good overall, and I'm glad they talked to Soghoian, who is doing good work and has a real knack for sounding reasonable in a way that I think probably comes across to people outside of the gives-a-shit-about-civil-liberties community. I maybe could wish for a little less of that "but we want the police to catch the badguys and I love my phone" stuff that takes over the "now we sound balanced!" section of so much journalism on the subject. Then again I suppose maybe it's less stressful than just saying "we're all pretty fucked and there's absolutely nothing anyone can do about it" over and over again.
posted by brennen at 8:26 PM on December 17, 2015 [4 favorites]


What, you want the government to do it themselves? Not likely - keep government small, subcontract it all! (And pay 10x the cost, with less accountability, etc. etc. etc.)
posted by filthy light thief at 8:30 PM on December 17, 2015 [5 favorites]


I have had a few really odd (read creepy) google "coincidences" lately.

The latest being I was walking the dogs with my daughter. She mentioned that one of her teachers told the class that the answer to a possibly unsolvable problem was likely to be 42 - she asked me why, and I told her of Hitchhiker's Guide. Google were not invited to the conversation.

Two days later I was browsing youtube to watch on our chromecast device, and first up "suggested just for you" - well Hitchhiker's Guide.

Android phone listening to conversations perhaps? Dunno - hope not. It's too much of a coincidence - First up in the suggestion.
posted by mattoxic at 8:39 PM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]


If they know you liked the book, I'd say the film is a terrible recommendation.
posted by pompomtom at 8:49 PM on December 17, 2015 [37 favorites]


The most likely explanation is that your daughter got curious and googled Hitchhiker's Guide (or looked for clips on Youtube) from a browser associated with a Google account that's also associated with your chromecast device. Or just from your household IP address. Still creepy, but less horrifyingly evil.
posted by figurant at 8:50 PM on December 17, 2015 [14 favorites]


but the fuckers coming up with this tech are making bank
Hey, at least the product isn't just an outright fake.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 8:53 PM on December 17, 2015


So, this technology has been used by the feds for twenty years...
has society collapsed yet?! Or has it mostly just made it easier to catch felons like Rigmaiden, who thought they were untouchable?

What we really should be asking is what the protections are, in order to make sure that the tech isn't misused. Are these indiscriminate, warrantless searches, or something else? What protections are currently in place? How can the protections be toughened, to prevent misuse?

Sounds to me like a whole bunch of people should be contacting their public representatives, to encourage at least a *private* review of Stingray.
posted by markkraft at 9:18 PM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]


Just because I have nothing to hide does not mean I don't have a right to privacy. Maybe society has not yet collapsed (maybe), but our very definition of what we mean when we say "privacy" has been totally eroded in the last 20 years.
posted by sockermom at 9:44 PM on December 17, 2015 [40 favorites]


What we really should be asking is what the protections are, in order to make sure that the tech isn't misused. Are these indiscriminate, warrantless searches, or something else? What protections are currently in place? How can the protections be toughened, to prevent misuse?

Well since the devices are secret, their uses are never disclosed, and everyone getting a hold of one has to sign NDAs, there clearly aren't appropriate protections.

It's not wrong or unreasonable for the police to have technology. But in a democratic society, police methods cannot remain a secret. A great deal of the accountability for law enforcement comes from the frightfully small number of cases that actually go to trial, where the defense is able to look through the evidence and determine how it was gathered. If the police can use whatever methods they want and then go back and retroactively construct their case, that makes the 4th amendment irrelevant.

It should be obvious by now to the bad guys that the police have various means to track cell phones. A public process that explores what kind of data these devices capture from innocent bystanders and what kinds of legal process are required to use them does nothing to help criminals, but gives all of us some idea what our police are doing both to and for us. There's no reason these devices need to be any more secret than telephone wiretaps, undercover detectives wearing a wire, a surveillance van parked outside, or any other police technique that has been used for decades.
posted by zachlipton at 10:15 PM on December 17, 2015 [15 favorites]


Hitler never had a cellphone.

Think about it!
posted by blue_beetle at 10:33 PM on December 17, 2015 [7 favorites]


So, this technology has been used by the feds for twenty years...
has society collapsed yet?! Or has it mostly just made it easier to catch felons like Rigmaiden, who thought they were untouchable?


Hard to say what exactly impact the tool has had as the prosecutor and police are keeping judges in the dark about its use, and keeping the general public in the dark about its use.

Has society collapsed? Well, what would define that exactly?

Is it troubling when law enforcement lies to judges? What else do they lie about? I would say that it encourages a culture of lawlessness within the law enforcement community. So in some ways, I'd say that's a disintegration of the rule of law.

When you couple this technology with other very troubling things going on in the law enforcement community - gunning down unarmed people without consequences, stealing from people not accused of a crime (civil forfeiture), blatant racial profiling, using information from the intelligence community and then lying about the source of that information... Yeah, actually, I'd say the US is experiencing a breakdown in civil society, led by the police.
posted by el io at 10:48 PM on December 17, 2015 [25 favorites]


Hitler never had a cellphone.

I don't have a cellphone. OMG, I'm Hitler!
posted by five fresh fish at 11:06 PM on December 17, 2015 [6 favorites]


So, this technology has been used by the feds for twenty years...
has society collapsed yet?!


We had slavery for hundreds of years and society didn't collapse. I'm not sure that means much.
posted by dirigibleman at 11:15 PM on December 17, 2015 [11 favorites]


has society collapsed yet?!

Not with a bang but a whimper.
posted by bongo_x at 11:19 PM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]


yes, sdr collapses this tech into hobbyist space, and yes, you can do the same if you have some commitment and a modest budget. make this kind of tech obviously hacker-accessible and maybe we'll see a clampdown and temporarily see feds scrambling for a new angle to wiretap randos on a whim; it's better than sitting on our asses knowing what's up.
posted by p3on at 11:21 PM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]


The recent event in San Bernardino provides further evidence that for the intelligence community the absolute worst way to take a sip of water is from a fire hose. And yet we continue, I guess because total surveillance is completely "Constitutional" and society hasn't collapsed yet.
posted by one_bean at 12:21 AM on December 18, 2015 [4 favorites]


I think the fuckers making bank is the reason for the spying, not a consequence.
posted by fullerine at 12:51 AM on December 18, 2015 [6 favorites]


For sufficiently broad values of both fuckers and making bank, I'll buy that.
posted by brennen at 1:08 AM on December 18, 2015 [2 favorites]


For police being lying and shifty seems part of the job description in the US. Lying to the public, to the peopl ethey are trying to turn into perps and then arestees, lying is a major part of the game.

"I'm going to ask you to get out of the car."
"I just need you to show me what's in your pockets."
"I'd like to look in your bag."
"Hey it isn't a problem with me, but I am guessing you smoke a little weed right?"

It is all a bullshit game to bend the rules around and turn you into a part of their quota. It is quite amazing if you are into the Copwatch / Flex Your Rights movement to contrast US and UK cops. When you start getting aggressive about what the police can and can't do in the UK, they tend to back right off. Because they understand that their job is to uphold the law, even if you are being an asshole about it.

It's no surprise at all that cops are lying to the DAs, the judges, everybody. It is a hardwired part of their culture.
posted by Meatbomb at 2:26 AM on December 18, 2015 [9 favorites]


It's sad, but I've been taking a little satisfaction in revelations like these.

"Oh yeah, I was a conspiracy theorist when I said this was possible five years ago and I'd be surprised if the government wasn't using the tech. And how long has it been going on? If anything, I was late to the game."
posted by DaveP at 3:16 AM on December 18, 2015


So, this technology has been used by the feds for twenty years... has society collapsed yet?!

omg this is brilliant. this will be my new standard of goodness.

"indubitable, you should stop driving down the sidewalk!"

"oh yeah? has society collapsed yet? no! quit whining."
posted by indubitable at 4:38 AM on December 18, 2015 [23 favorites]


wait, society hasn't collapsed?
posted by eustatic at 4:45 AM on December 18, 2015 [4 favorites]


Dammit, McNulty.
posted by CincyBlues at 6:14 AM on December 18, 2015 [1 favorite]


We're discussing police overreach In the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world. Society may not have collapsed, but It's definitely wobbling around like a drunk on a two-legged stool.
posted by billyfleetwood at 6:31 AM on December 18, 2015 [4 favorites]


So, this technology has been used by the feds for twenty years...
has society collapsed yet?! Or has it mostly just made it easier to catch felons like Rigmaiden, who thought they were untouchable?


I always keep thinking about how Elliot Spitzer who was willing to take on Wall Street and white collar crime was taken down in a prostitution bust by anti-terrorist financial surveillance right before the financial collapse.

Has anybody else important been busted that way since? Not that I know of.

Surveillance can be used to do interesting things like shape behavior.
posted by srboisvert at 6:34 AM on December 18, 2015 [11 favorites]


Someone should go after these cops for violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. They might be able to beat the charge, but can they beat the ride?
posted by cjorgensen at 6:42 AM on December 18, 2015


I just recently updated my Computer... and that was fine but, my network connectivity was acting up. I had had this problem once before with my router so I went to clear out my "remembered" wifi hotspots, because I had had a router failure a week before and had a new one.

WTF? There was networks my very large machine (read doesn't travel) this machine has never been out of my house.... The network connectivity came from my Laptop (never connected to my main computer even on network) and my tablet (sync'd regularly) from 2-4 YEARS ago and also hotspots my WIFE had connected to from her machines that have NEVER been near my main machine except on the same home network...

I was desperate to get some work done so I cleaned it up I WISH I had gotten a screen cap.

I am not in anyway a paranoid person but the company that makes the stuff I liked to use is now off my list of good companies and I am seriously considering a non-connected computer for doing my actual work.

I have also since dumped my cell phone (also by the same company)
posted by mrgroweler at 6:44 AM on December 18, 2015


For the Romans it was inattention to horse fashion trends. In the fifth century the horse collar gets invented in China and all the horses in the West get jealous and resentful over their lack of bling. Bam, civilization collapses.
posted by XMLicious at 6:55 AM on December 18, 2015 [1 favorite]


WTF? There was networks my very large machine (read doesn't travel) this machine has never been out of my house....

Windows 10? They introduced a "wifi sharing" feature in it
posted by ymgve at 7:18 AM on December 18, 2015 [3 favorites]


It's actually really easy to think up a nightmare scenario for this: small town sheriff gets his hands on this technology. He knows he is facing a tough election. He tracks the cell phones of the people who have been to his opponent's campaign meetings, their friends, and people he knows oppose him and has them pulled over on bogus traffic stops, having them end up in jail until the polls close. Yes, this can be done without this technology, but this makes it so much easier. Most people break traffic laws, so if you know which ones to target, you're all set.

Also, given the above information about this stuff being easy to manufacture and given the news reports about the cartels kidnapping engineers, I think we can safely assume that the drug cartels have their own stingray like devices. Which, to me, indicates a need to build in a system to turn off geolocating on cell phones. To law enforcement, it just means they need even more surveillance powers.
posted by Hactar at 7:46 AM on December 18, 2015 [3 favorites]


go back to the part where that's a "tough election"?
posted by 7segment at 7:54 AM on December 18, 2015


Huh. First thing I thought of was Nicodemus's shadow - Anduriel - from the Dresden Files books.
posted by Thistledown at 8:07 AM on December 18, 2015


The Department of Justice “uses technology in a manner that is consistent with the requirements and protections of the Constitution, including the Fourth Amendment, and applicable statutory authorities,” said Marc Raimondi, a Justice Department spokesperson who, for six years prior to working for the DOJ, worked for Harris Corp., the manufacturer of the Stingray.

Well, there's your problem.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:19 AM on December 18, 2015 [1 favorite]


Some more recent tidbits from Schneier:

Here's an IMSI catcher for sale on alibaba.com. At this point, every dictator in the world is using this technology against its own citizens. They're used extensively in China to send SMS spam without paying the telcos any fees. On a Food Network show called Mystery Diners -- episode 108, "Cabin Fever" -- someone used an IMSI catcher to intercept a phone call between two restaurant employees.

The new model of the IMSI catcher from Harris Corporation is called Hailstorm. It has the ability to remotely inject malware into cell phones ... We believe that the more modern ISMI catchers also work against 3G and 4G networks.

The FBI recently released more than 5,000 pages of documents about Stingray, but nearly everything is redacted.


Pwnie Express demos cellular threat detector
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:31 AM on December 18, 2015 [3 favorites]


One more thing: The FBI/DEA do not publish statistics on the number of witnesses/informants/agents intimidated or outright killed as a result of cell-phone surveillance by organized crime. If they could, I think we'd have a much different conversation about this subject.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:41 AM on December 18, 2015


markkraft: "So, this technology has been used by the feds for twenty years...
has society collapsed yet?! Or has it mostly just made it easier to catch felons like Rigmaiden, who thought they were untouchable?
"

"This technology hasn't lead to an extinction event, how bad could it be??? HEH."
posted by boo_radley at 8:52 AM on December 18, 2015 [3 favorites]


"One more thing: The FBI/DEA do not publish statistics on the number of witnesses/informants/agents intimidated or outright killed as a result of cell-phone surveillance by organized crime. If they could, I think we'd have a much different conversation about this subject."

No, we wouldn't. The problem is with the way the technology is being used, not with the tech itself. Government abusing surveillance technology and fighting oversight of said usage leads to corruption and possible infiltration of government by organized crime.
posted by I-baLL at 8:52 AM on December 18, 2015


Windows 10? They introduced a "wifi sharing" feature in it

Not windows 10 and even if it was these WIFI spots are before Windows 8 one of the tablets is
iOS 7

[Edit] I clicked on the link you sent this is not what I am speaking about this is actual connection information and Passwords on a computer that is in no way shared (by myself)
posted by mrgroweler at 8:56 AM on December 18, 2015 [1 favorite]


The problem is with the way the technology is being used, not with the tech itself.

I think we're saying the same thing. I just wanted to point out that the cost of keeping the cell networks insecure (and there is certainly very little pressure to do otherwise) invariably helps the "bad guys" to some degree, and keeping this under wraps (or worse yet, turning a blind eye) gives us little insight into to what degree having backdoor-able systems enables non-lawful activities. This would be particularly relevant to the encryption debates going on in Congress.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 10:42 AM on December 18, 2015


The problem is with the way the technology is being used, not with the tech itself.

There's no such thing as "the tech itself." All technologies are socially constructed by the societies from which they come. A "stingray" is more than just a box with some circuits: it's created by humans for a purpose, in the context of a society which values the notion of safety over privacy and personal liberty. We are our technology, and our technology is us.
posted by anifinder at 11:38 AM on December 18, 2015 [2 favorites]


Someone should go after these cops for violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

This actually highlights another major problem with law enforcement accountability. The same prosecutors who work with cops on a regular basis are supposed to turn around and prosecute their co-workers? That's a tough sell no matter how strong one's convictions are (so to speak).

(pun originally unintended, honest)
posted by antonymous at 12:00 PM on December 18, 2015 [1 favorite]


I once answered a phone call from an employee saying that another employee was in the hospital. I googled the name of the hospital on the same phone to get the phone number, and Google guessed the name of the hospital after the second letter.
posted by 4ster at 6:08 PM on December 18, 2015


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