justice store this is an amazing story an astonished that is not getting a lot
of coverage but it's getting
no coverage it's almost as if as if the media had been called you know by 8 by a
James call me the director the FBI and said
don't talk about this because there's like nobody talking about it and it's a
it's
totally totally strange there's this thing called the Stingray this is a
brand name
that's the manufacturers name and
it's a a box there they make a portable version and they make a larger version
that huge set up wherever you want to do it
being do it and be in a subway station you can do it enough mall you can do it
in the middle it up town you can do in your apartment and what this thing does
is it pretends it's a cell tower
so you're walking down the street measure walking down the street driving
on the street
your phone is moving from cell tower to cell tower
as your destination changes and so you come into the area of one of these
things and some of them actually even have the ability to
to send out a signal that shuts down other nearby said that basically jams
other nearby cell towers
so this is the only cell tower that any phone in its range in with Anna
with a few blocks are a few who knows what the Rangers
any phone within its range is gonna lock into this thing now is phony cell towers
then
on that you know they look them up to a telephone line into an internet
connection
and so from your phone it looks like
you can make phone calls and you can and looks like you can access the internet
and you can
although it might be a little slow but here's
Rob this contraption is because basically what's called a man in the
middle attack at this contraption the Stingray and then there's a whole bunch
of other brands over as well
allows whoever owns it
to listen to every telephone conversation and two
and job and to you know Deepak inspector inspected anyway what's all the Internet
traffic
an arguably to even go into the individual phones that are hooked up to
it
and snatch their meta-data who they called what their contacts are what you
know what they're up to
and the way we learned about this
in a big way is this trial the AIHW
Todd Robert McKenzie you probably never heard of I he
this this guy an end to his bodies they
the the this Elon Nakashima
is writing about this the Washington Post on February 22nd
the headline is secrecy around police surveillance equipment proves
a cases undoing and Alan Nakashima writes a case against I'd rate Mackenzie
looked like an easy win for prosecutors
he and two buddies robbed a small-time pot dealer at a hundred and thirty
dollars where the weed using BB guns
under Florida law that was robbery with a deadly weapon with the sensible least
four years in prison
but before trial his defense team detected investigators use a secret
surveillance tool in an unprecedented move a state judge ordered the police to
show the device
cell towers simulator sometimes called a stingray to the attorneys
would rather than show the equipment the state offer Mackenzie a plea bargain
six months appropriation you don't go to jail
we don't want to talk about this machine that we've got and then they
and then Ellen Nakashima rights Mackenzie's case is emblematic of a
growing be hidden use by local law enforcement a sophisticated surveillance
technology
barge in the national security world the Tallahassee Police use the Stingray or a
single day a similar device
in more than two hundred fifty investigations over a six-year period
The Washington Post notes stingrays manufacture Harris Corp is told the SEC
that the device is only used in emergencies
but at least 48 state and local law enforcement agencies in 20 states the
District of Columbia have bought these contraptions
in Baltimore a judge's booking better Bri again ready for the new
wash impose peace in Baltimore judge is pushing back against the refusal police
officers to answer questions will testify
presumably about this machine in Charlotte far following a newspaper
investigation the state's attorney is reviewing whether prosecutors
illegally withheld information about this in Tacoma Washington
after a separate newspaper investigation found the judges in almost two hundred
cases
had no idea they were issuing orders for the Stingray
the court set new rules requiring police to disclose the tools use
when this is this is something
this is pretty mind-boggling and by the way it's not necessarily just police
agencies
I'd I had talked some months ago about an article
that I'd seen here in DC in the local DC media about how there are at least 13 at
these towers
in downtown Washington DC and I believe that there's one over by the white house
cuz
every time I walk within two blocks in the white house my phone goes totally
nuts
and it makes perfect sense I mean you know if I was secret service but
man charged with protecting the White House I would put one of these
contraptions in a place in listening to every conversation listening for
somebody to say okay get up there with that
you know whatever the governor machine gunner whatever your
bomber whatever you're up to i mean you know its security it's the white house
but what happens if the guy who's running the machine is served you know
the Mafia
or what official
you know some some local hacker who wants to to steal your stuff
I mean there's
there's a breathtaking potential for abuse here
from these devices which are being sold all over the country now
even our cell phones
are no longer private its it
really quite astonishing where we're going and how we're doing this
so