Congressman introduces bill to end warrantless Stingray surveillance
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
In my, admittedly naive, understanding is that cel towers have signatures. For instance, using Tasker for Android, I can know when I'm near home by the tower it detects. When the Stingray overpowers that tower, can't I just have a tasker task or an app or something that would detect that and shut down my celphone?
*Note: I don't really need this, but if the law wants a tech fight, they should get one.
Which would be an amusing scene; cars full of people with laptops and phones, sitting around a telephone pole, or wherever they mount the damned things.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/12/31/snoopsnit...
To me this just reinforces the need for strong copyleft like GPLv3 and reveals the glaring insufficiencies of GPLv2 and BSD-esque licenses. Stallman was and is right, he was just a man ahead of his time. Those who recognize this and work towards freeing themselves and their users will be ahead of the game when the dystopian future hits.
Most people won't understand this until everyone else plugs in Apple iBrain. I won't be touching my neurons with anything but GPLv5.
As for the length, a good argument can be made that violations done under the color of authority[1] should always be punished more severely than "regular" violations of the law. The people who have the power to enforce the law have much greater power than the average citizen. Abuse of that greater power should require a similarly larger punishment.
That said, I have no idea if 10 years is appropriate. If it isn't I'm sure a better length of time can be negotiated.
It would also be necessary to have hiring institutions publicize that they are hiring a power abuser (i.e., if a police chief didn't care about the previous abuse of power he would still be required to inform the community of the situation).
Someone running for office would be required to do it to, it'd be great, tack "I was convicted of blah blah blah" on somewhere near the "I approve this message".
The above is still a much more substantial punishment than I would want to see for an average citizen that was eavesdropping on cell phone calls.
That's not the part that warrants a strong punishment. Jail time is justified for the abuse of power while acting under the color of law. The particulars about that abuse (eavesdropping on a cell phone) is less important.
> registry
While this is an interesting idea, I caution strongly against creating any kind of "registry". The current examples we have seen (e.g. "sex offenders") has shown how registries dilute important concepts like "innocent until proven guilty" when presence on the registry doesn't map 1-to-1 with "found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt".
Even more worrying is the idea that someone should be tainted for life (or "a long time") for a mistake. Branding people with a modern "scarlet letter" for their mistakes doesn't create an incentive for that person to change their behavior[1]. Once someone has "paid their debt to society", they deserve a 2nd chance that is free of past accusations.
There may be a way to make some aspects of a registry work without these problems, but I'm haven't seen it.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBmJay_qdNc ("The Truth About Dishonesty")
The thought is that a registry/disclosure rule is still a strong punishment (it presumably prevents them from using their primary skills to repeat the offense) but should cost less than a prison sentence.
I suppose I don't care if incarceration is justified, I'm more interested in whether it is necessary.
They don't need to be in the Panopticon, just completely unable to keep the smallest aspect of themselves secret from the public. Enforced celebrity, complete with automated paparazzi, ought to do the trick. A year of that, followed by some post-trauma counseling, would probably ensure at least a little extra caution in obtaining reasonable and specific warrants.
So when you guys wanna try to make this a bill?
The root cause of these issues is that there is no liability for people who sell systems with security holes.
The sooner we stop thinking one party is looking out for us more than the other, the better off we _citizens_ will be.
There are still exemptions in the proposed bill...granted they are in the FISA court and related to perceived danger related to 'terrorism' or 'organized crime'.
Some Republicans will still sing this tune, some won't. There is a bit of a split at the moment.
Same as if something bad happens the headline will say "Republican Congressman" but leave out party affiliation the other way.
Bias in journalism mostly isn't a matter of just making things up (Dan Rather aside) or injecting blatant opinions into news (though that happens sometimes too), but a matter of which stories get pushed and how they get framed.
Their right-wing equivalents (WSJ/Breitbart/Daily Mail) do the same thing to Democrats.
Not so sure that's true; every article except this one that I can find on the Guardian with the tag "US Congress", positive or negative, and whether it involves Democrats, Republicans, or both, seems to mention the party affiliation of the members referenced.
While the Guardian is left-leaning, not mentioning Chaffetz's party seems to be an aberration for them, not part of a pattern.
Which isn't just sarcasm, the 2 party labels are less and less useful for understanding how a national candidate sees various issues and there are a lot of congressional districts where using one label or the other makes it a lot easier to get elected.
-James Madison, Speech, Constitutional Convention (1787-06-29)
It seems to have a few too many loopholes for my taste, but I guess it could eliminate 80% of the abusive uses of Stingrays out there.