Sting Ray—The New Scary Technology that Increases the Ability to Spy on You

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/drugs/sting-ray-new-scary-technology-increases-ability-spy-you



“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you,” wrote Joseph Heller in 1961’s Catch-22. At the time, this comic statement wasn’t necessarily something ordinary people could relate to. Paranoia about powerful conspirators using broad machinations to trap a person belonged in fiction, or to the mentally ill, or—to whatever fraction of the population used drugs like marijuana or speed.

In the post 9/11 age, paranoia has ascended from a vagrant muttering on the sidewalk to a respected participant in any discussion about national security or law enforcement policy. Warrantless surveillance and searches by the government have intermittently dominated the discourse since former President Bush and Congress began formulating strategies on September 12, 2001. Recent revelations about the National Security Agency by the whistleblower Edward Snowden have made clear that the government now has the capability to learn personal details about any American at any time through the collection of metadata—whom they call, where their cell phones go, and more.

The government has offered assurances that both the purported capability and use of such technology is nowhere near the hyperbolic claims of those like Snowden—former NSA director Michael Hayden has been especially vocal on this point—and maintained that its use is essential in combating terrorism and other threats to national security. But while the use of advanced surveillance methods and their threat to ordinary people are being kicked around and debated as national policy issues, high tech has bled from the shadowy world of spies into the hands of local law enforcement, and in America, local law enforcement is a cornerstone in the (recently retitled, or more appropriately detitled, by the current administration) war on drugs. And like many controversies that have arisen over that war in the last four decades, new spying technology might put civil liberties in the crosshairs.

Several police departments across the country are now believed to be using a device called “ Stingray,” a high tech tool manufactured by Harris Corporation, a telecommunications company that contracts extensively with the government and military. Stingray mimics cell phone towers to learn precision locational and identifying details about individual phones. “It’s like the kids’ game, Marco Polo,” says Nathan Wessler, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, “The device is basically saying, ‘Hey I’m an AT&T tower,' or 'I’m a Sprint tower,' and then all the phones on that network report back and say, ‘Oh, hi tower. Here I am.’”

[Octafish]

1. The police aren't supposed to talk about it.

They're just supposed to use it and bust the bad guys and whoever else they happen to snoop in on, no matter how innocent they happent to have been before 9/11.