from Hacker News

Cops hid use of phone tracking tech in court documents at feds’ request

by Atlas on 6/20/14, 4:57 AM with 53 comments

• by downandout on 6/20/14, 8:13 AM

  Cops are basically saying that they can do illegal things, and then actively conceal them during the discovery process so that defendants cannot challenge the illegal conduct in court. This kind of thing isn't going to stop. Everyone should assume that any unencrypted cell phone calls and texts can and will be examined by law enforcement. Act accordingly.

  That said, defense attorneys really need to be on the lookout for cases like this, where only vague references to confidential sources of information are disclosed. If they know the tell-tale signs, they can ask the judge to issue orders during discovery that will put the prosecutor in the position of either being held in contempt of court or disclosing to the defense the specific illegal tactics the police used.

• by bediger4000 on 6/20/14, 12:50 PM

  It appears that there's more going on beneath the surface than we knew about. First, police departments sign NDAs so threatening that they don't want to reveal the use of stringrays. Next, US Marshalls seize Florida records of the use of stingrays. What does this pervasive concealment of the use of IMSI catchers/stingrays mean? I can think of two things:

  1. IMSI catchers are used constantly, without warrant and maybe even without any administrative oversight. The discloseed use is the tip of some giant iceberg of surveillance. Revealing the use of IMSI catchers would imply the giant iceberg, even if we don't know where it is.

  2. There's some kind of Freudian shame/concealment issue at the DoJ. They know it's un-American (and it is!) but they can't stop doing it for some reason. So, they hide its use.

• by codyb on 6/20/14, 3:55 PM

  I'm not sure what to say. Mostly I'm just frightened for the future. It's very disheartening to watch civil liberties be dismantled so rapidly.

  When you combine this with the secret transatlantic talks for the proliferation of extremely large multinational corporations and the rapid militarization of the police, it almost feels as if there might be a coup being slowly but silently executed right under our noses.

  And no one cares. I did my first stand up set and had a joke about going to an ACLU meeting, and no one even knows what the ACLU is.

  As scary as it, I certainly understand, that it is not as bad here as many places, but that doesn't mean I can't be concerned with the recent developments.

  I just hope the American spirit will shine through one day and turn all of this around. The house passing to defund back door NSA research is heartening at least. Lets see what happens in the Senate.

• by vaadu on 6/20/14, 12:48 PM

  How is this not a form of perjury? How does this not get every defendant a new trial? How many law suits will come of this for violations of people's constitutional rights?

  This crap should result in RICO charges and jail time for all parties that knew of this coverup and didn't try to stop it.

• by NoMoreNicksLeft on 6/20/14, 4:39 PM

  Some of you will end up on juries. Just vote to acquit. Obviously you can't vote to acquit when evidence is withheld at trial... how would you know?

  So vote to acquit for all crimes. Period. The damage that one or two or even dozens of criminals will cause is much less than that caused by a government that believes itself righteous when it undermines fundamental human liberties.

• by CWuestefeld on 6/20/14, 3:51 PM

  The way stingray works is reportedly by pretending to be a cell phone tower. It seems to me this can be used by a smartphone app to monitor for stingray usage.

  If the phone knows that it's not moving very fast (Androids certainly know this, I'm sure iPhones can as well), and a new cell phone tower appears suddenly, it seems to me that would be a good indicator somebody is stingraying nearby. (this isn't bulletproof, but would be a good starting point for further data analysis)

  An app like this could record and report such incidents, so that we could form a larger picture of how often and how widely it's used.

• by jrochkind1 on 6/20/14, 5:54 PM

  A couple months pre-snowden, I was robbed of a cell phone, and reported it to the cops, and had an interview with a detective.

  Who told me I should not call and cancel the cell phone yet, because 'they had ways' of tracking it's use, wink wink, but we can't really tell you about the details, wink wink.

  Honestly, if he had left out the smirking and "we can't tell you about the details", it probably wouldn't have occured to me that there was anything odd here, sure, the cops can issue a warrant or some such paperwork and get records from the phone company probably, who knows.

  But with all the winking and smirking, I thought, geez, what the fuck, he says it's not supposed to be public information but he's telling me about it... should I, like, get in touch with the ACLU about this or something? I never did though.