{"id":182199,"date":"2015-11-23T21:18:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-24T02:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/11\/23\/the-judge-is-right-i-expect-obamas-doj-to-appeal\/"},"modified":"2015-11-23T21:18:00","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T02:18:00","slug":"the-judge-is-right-i-expect-obamas-doj-to-appeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/11\/23\/the-judge-is-right-i-expect-obamas-doj-to-appeal\/","title":{"rendered":"The Judge is Right, I Expect Obama’s DoJ to Appeal"},"content":{"rendered":"

A magistrate has placed significant restrictions on the use of the “Stingray” cell phone tower spoofer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A federal judge in Illinois has recently taken the unusual step of issuing three new stringent requirements<\/a> for the government when it wants to deploy cell-site simulators. The move aims to protect the Fourth Amendment rights of innocent bystanders against unreasonable search and seizure. <\/span>

<\/span>Of course, for now, this order only applies to this one judge in the Northern District of Illinois. <\/span>

<\/span>These new stingray requirements<\/a> come just about a month after the Department of Homeland Security imposed<\/a> its own warrant requirement, following a similar move<\/a> by the Department of Justice.<\/span>

<\/span>
<\/span>Not only can stingrays<\/a> be used to determine location by spoofing a cell tower, but they can also be used to intercept calls and text messages. Once deployed, the devices intercept data from a target phone<\/a> as well as information from other phones within the vicinity. <\/span>

<\/span>As part of an ongoing drug case, US Magistrate Judge Iain Johnston told prosecutors recently that they will now have to fulfill three distinct requirements<\/a> before he will sign off on the use of the invasive surveillance devices, as a way to protect the privacy of those who happened to be near a surveillance target. The memorandum opinion came down earlier this month as part of a largely sealed ongoing drug investigation, the details of which the judge described as “unsurprising.” <\/span>

<\/span>What is surprising is Judge Johnston\u2019s order to compel government investigators to not only obtain a warrant (which he acknowledges they do in this case), but also to not use them when “an inordinate number of innocent third parties\u2019 information will be collected,” such as at a public sporting event. <\/span>

<\/span>This first requirement runs counter to the FBI\u2019s previous claim that it can warrantlessly use stingrays in public places<\/a>, where no reasonable expectation of privacy is granted. <\/span>

<\/span>Second, the judge requires that the government “immediately destroy” collateral data collection within 48 hours (and prove it to the court). <\/span>

<\/span>Finally, Judge Johnston also notes<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

Third, law enforcement officers are prohibited from using any data acquired beyond that necessary to determine the cell phone information of the target. A cell-site simulator is simply too powerful of a device to be used and the information captured by it too vast to allow its use without specific authorization from a fully informed court. Minimizing procedures such as the destruction of private information the United States has no right to keep are necessary to protect the goals of the Fourth Amendment.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’m thinking that if someone could come up with an app that could detect when it is likely that one of these devices is in use, they sell it for a significant chunk of change.<\/p>\n

I think that you could do that with an algorithm involving ping times to a cell tower.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A magistrate has placed significant restrictions on the use of the “Stingray” cell phone tower spoofer: A federal judge in Illinois has recently taken the unusual step of issuing three new stringent requirements for the government when it wants to deploy cell-site simulators. The move aims to protect the Fourth Amendment rights of innocent bystanders …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[971,1102,972,1041],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-rights","category-intelligence","category-justice","category-law-enforcement-misconduct"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182199"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}