Federal judge puts limits on FBI use of “stingray” cell site simulators | Hacker News Reader

Federal judge puts limits on FBI use of “stingray” cell site simulators

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114 pointsdeclan22 comments

The actual requirements start on page 8. Here's my summary:

> First, law enforcement officers must make reasonable efforts to minimize the capture of signals emitted from cell phones used by people other than the target of the investigation. [...] Moreover, law enforcement officers must not use a cell-site simulator when, because of the location and time, an inordinate number of innocent third parties’ information will be collected.

> Second, law enforcement officers must immediately destroy all data other than the data identifying the cell phone used by the target. The destruction must occur within forty-eight hours after the data is captured. [...] Additionally, the destruction must be evidenced by a verification provided to the Court with the return of the warrant.

> Third, law enforcement officers are prohibited from using any data acquired beyond that necessary to determine the cell phone information of the target.

"Cell site simulators" Somehow I don't think they'd call it that if I "simulated a law enforcement officer", presented a "simulated identification document", or enticed someone to pay me for a "simulated service", opening mail addressed to my "simulated persona" but not to me, etc. These devices are fraudulently impersonating users' cell service carriers. They are fake cell towers.

They likely operate with permission from the cell service carriers, which would make a big difference legally.

I can't really find a statement on that either way. The 3 requirements in this memo do not include such a stipulation, though. (The requirements are to minimize the capture, destroy extra data, and not use extra data.) Part of their operation involves MITM'ing between the phone and the network[0], which probably means the network has not been told it's happening.

Even if they have permission, do you think that's as stringent as it would be if they had to subpoena this from the network? Some agencies are using these things daily, or hundreds of times in a few years, without even telling the courts.[1] The FCC only approved them for emergency use.[2] They are probably not licensed for most of the times they are used, even if the network says OK.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker#Interce... [1] http://www.wired.com/2014/03/stingray/ [2] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/09/new-e-mail-shows-...

Do they? Why would the Govt. tell the carriers about it?

Because without carrier permission, they're violating Federal laws administered by the FCC.

Without carrier permission, they might be violating some type of interference regulations, but I would also think the fake cell device itself and maybe its operator would need FCC licenses regardless of carrier permission. As an Ars Technica post I linked in another comment shows, the cell sites are probably being used outside of the constraints of their FCC licenses.

This is the actual link http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/illinois...

Well, yes, but HN often links to blog posts and news articles about a court opinion rather than the opinion itself.

A summary (that links to the opinion) tends to be more useful to non-specialists than a document beginning with: "United States of America v. In the Matter of the Application of the United States, No. 3:2015mc00021 - Document 1 (N.D. Ill. 2015)"

the blog post does not even mention warrants but the justia link does... I would be curious to know if a warrant is required for all people located in the area where such a device is used (which of course should be impossible).

Well if we are frank the post didn't really had an opinion (a constructed argument) or a valuable summary of the actual case. If this type of content would be posted by a "complete no-body" (as is not some one of note either in the HN community or in any other community) it would quite likely have gotten flagged for being used to generate views when one could link to the content directly. Also quite a few people stay away from Google services like Google+ or at least prefer not to use them, so for those people offering the link to the actual court ruling might be of service.

A 3 sentence Google Plus post can hardly be called a summary of the opinion.

Silly thought experiment:

Police dogs are known for being trained to deliver false positives, i.e. saying "drugs" when the are no drugs. Couldn't STINGRAY et al be used to the same effect? I.e.: "the suspect showed a pattern predictive of child pornography" being used as a pretext for executing a warrant?

Where is this wrong? Is there any evidence in favor of this interpretation?

It says the destruction of collected info not pertaining to the target must occur within 48 hours but prior to this it says they frequently need to diff multiple sessions possibly at different locations to pinpoint the target and eliminate others.

Does this mean they cannot run sessions separated by > 48 hours, since no diff would be possible afterwards?

No, it means they're going to do the sessions anyway, keep the data, do the diff whenever they feel like it and then phone in an anonymous call with the evidence, then destroy the collected information.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction FTW

i guess with the W = warrant

I wish I were surprised these provisions weren't originally penned when drafting laws related to cell site simulators, but my faith in the US government actually looking out for the privacy of its citizens has been less than stellar.

Law in the US tends to come only after abuses have happened, especially with regards to government powers. It was a brilliant marketing strategy on the part of the companies providing the cell tower simulators to claim they were covered under "national security rules" to avoid giving secrets to terrorists -- even though use of such cell site simulators by police/military has been commonplace across the world since the 90s. Especially in the types of totalitarian regimes that often push people into extreme ideologies. It prevented this from being much of a story for a long time, and by shielding the source of information in court, it allowed them to sell a lot of these devices before the legal system caught up.

this is a great point.

I often think of the current research chemical market in regards to this: a poorly understood drug like MDPV makes the rounds on the internet, someone decides to take the risks for the rewards in the gray-area and makes it widely available, someone buys it at a gas station and ends up in the hospital after doing something dumb, a panic ends up getting it banned, and a short while later the cycle restarts with a new drug that is still in the gray-area of the law.

Fuck the FCC. We need open source radios.

I hate that you were downvoted for the unfortunately negative truth. Open source firmware, with radios seperate from cpus (and seperate DMA), is exactly what we need for security. All these proprietary peices, half from foreign countries, are more a threat to "national security" and "cybersecurity" than just about anything else. They want to pass CISA etc because of cybersecurity but their actions show levels of incompetence with few bounds.

When is the government going to embrace open source as a basis for security of users?

OpenBTS, YateBTS, OsmoBTS, and Osmo-BB are already doing some pretty interesting things. They could interact with existing networks if the devices running them could be FCC certified.

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