Hacker News Reader

Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

> In this case, police used two versions of the stingray — one mounted on a police vehicle, and the other carried by hand. Police drove through the area using the vehicle-based device until they found the apartment complex in which the target phone was located, and then they walked around with the handheld device and stood “at every door and every window in that complex” until they figured out which apartment the phone was located in. In other words, police were lurking outside people’s windows and sending powerful electronic signals into their private homes in order to collect information from within.

Seriously ? And no police officer was ashamed of what they were doing during that whole time ?

View on HN

What makes you think agents of the American state have any more shame than various other examples of thugs run amok throughout history?

There is still a wide-spread belief that the agents of the burgeoning US police state are 'just people like everyone else,' that are 'just trying to do their jobs.'

Thanks for speaking for me. Actually I would rather speak for myself. Try citing a study or some statistics next time.

So they are not people, and most definitely are not attempting to do their jobs in any way, shape or fashion? Gotcha.

They are people, and they are doing their jobs. It's just that people are capable of horrible crimes, and these jobs shouldn't exist.

And nothing works better at implementing a police state than a fervent belief that your nation and culture are somehow 'special' and occupy a unique place in history. It allows you to disregard hard-learned lessons of the past. Lessons like 'Tyranny lurks always just around the corner, and the speed and ease with which it will manifest itself, is as breathtaking as it is terrifying."

The jobs should exist but there should be some actual oversight with serious penalties for transgressions.

Heh, to be clear I'm not saying there should be no police, rather that what these police are doing shouldn't be part of the job description.

Isn't the real problem the extent of the damage, harm and evil that can be done by people who are 'just people like everyone else,' that are 'just trying to do their jobs.'

See Millgram experiment and any totalitarian state ever.

Note that I am not saying that the US is totalitarian but that the wide-spread belief that you mention can be completely valid and you can still be in trouble.

1) the milgram experiment was a case of academic fraud.

2) you'd think that on the 25th anniversary of the Tienanmen square massacre people would back off off the claims that the US is even a little bit totalitarian. 25 years ago this day, the Chinese state killed at least 1000 people and imprisoned, tortured and worse several tens of thousands more. Why ? Because a student union tried to create a second political party (and was succeeding). And no one cares today. The US has a long, long way to fall before getting to that level.

3) why is tracing cell phones such a problem ? How can anyone possibly believe anything other than that cell phones constantly broadcast who they are and their number to companies that are logging those broadcasts ? That's how the fucking system works. The police can somewhat shortcut that process to get a little bit more accurate information.

Furthermore the main reason phones are broadcasting their location as accurately as possible is to aim antennas on them ... Why ? Because that way the carrier can support a greater density of phones and a greater density of antennas. Before long this will be accurate to within a few centimeters (and I don't imagine it will stop there). If you want more bandwith on mobile, we have to do this.

I feel this is like complaining your car sometimes drives ... Yes the effect on privacy is bad (assuming the compromise of turning off transmitters is too much to ask, as it clearly is), but it's how the technology works.

This is the same principle at work as "information wants to be free". Copyrighted works are available for free, because the technology to block transmission will always lose to technology to transmit. But the same goes for any information. There are a million valid reasons to broadcast information about you and of around you, one of which is a cell phone network. That means that where you are, what you're doing, who you're with ... will tend to become public information over time.

My problem with all this is that the ACLU had to fight to uncover what the police were doing. Then, in order to protect law enforcement secret technology, the Federal government also jumped in.

As usual, technologies and laws that were brought in to "fight terrorism" now find their way into domestic non-terrorist-fighting contexts; then the government wants to exert its special powers that we gave it to fight terrorism against us the citizens.

It's always a fight to prevent those in power from seizing more and more power.

2) In some ways, the Chinese have the advantage there, because the state perceived that a new political party with a few thousand members might have been a threat to their power. In the US, you can form as many new political parties as you like, but not one of them will ever get anyone elected. Tanks do not show up at organization meetings because they are not necessary. Change is prevented by other, less visible means. No one dies before the cameras.

3) The problem is that private and usually harmless behaviors have become increasingly criminalized. As Cardinal Richelieu put it, a devious prosecutor can find a capital crime in as little as six lines written by an innocent. When the state records all that you do, the only thing required to destroy you absolutely is a reason to look you up in the index.

We have good reasons to value privacy and pseudoanonymity. I, for one, would like to be able to pick my nose and scratch my balls sometimes, without fearing that someone is watching--or even recording it for my later humiliation.

As for those antennas? They can be aimed via computer algorithm, without ever involving a human. Beyond that point, no one needs to know where my phone is. Even in the most lenient scenario, where the company actually needs to analyze patterns of phone locations to provide service, it is not necessary to uniquely identify those phones or connect them with a person.

1) Don't know but people can do some pretty evil things when part of a system.

2) I don't think that the US is totalitarian but it is worth fighting to keep it that way (likewise the UK where I am) before it gets to that point. I'm coming to think that elections are a fairly minor part of freedom (though still important) and the critical parts are the checks and balances and the the limits on authority and government power and centralisation of that power. And that the situation is not as bad (or even nowhere near as bad) as a brutally repressive totalitarian regime at one of its worst points is not the comparison that should be being make. The US should be comparing itself against the most free countries and its own ideals not against some of the worst things.

3) No problem at all but law enforcement should show probable cause and get a warrant first in most circumstances before interfering with people's legitimate communications. (It sounds like they are impersonating a cell tower and preventing the communications directly travelling between the local users and the cell company, even if they are forwarding the signal they are still interfering and if they are impersonating the cell company and requesting details from the phone that are only intended for the cell company that sounds like unauthorized access to a computer to me).

> police were lurking outside people’s windows and sending powerful electronic signals into their private homes in order to collect information from within.

Is it just me or does this not sound terribly terrible? My neighbours wifi router sends "powerful electronic signals" into my private home every day.

> My neighbours wifi router sends "powerful electronic signals" into my private home every day.

Making your phone use max power to emit information is nothing like the wifi radiation you get from your neighbors.

It is though; its all non-ionising radiation. Both the wifi and your phones broadcast information indiscriminately in the interest of connecting to infrastructure.

The similarity between the two shouldn't be ignored, since there's potential for the comparison between phone's and wifi devices to come up in legal proceedings (if they haven't already).

> It is though; its all non-ionising radiation. Both the wifi and your phones broadcast information indiscriminately in the interest of connecting to infrastructure.

I was not referring to their nature, but to the power of the emission.

> Whereas a mobile phone can range from 21 dBm (125 mW) for Power Class 4 to 33 dBm (2W) for Power class 1, a wireless router can range from a typical 15 dBm (30 mW) strength to 27 dBm (500 mW) on the high end

The radiations from your phone are more powerful than from your traditional router, plus your emitter is usually close to your body, while you usually far away from a wifi router.

According to Wikipedia[1], the solar radiation at Earth is roughly 1361 W/m^2 at the top of the atmosphere. The atmosphere will deflect a small fraction of it, but won't change the value much. Therefore, if you draw a circle of 2-inch diameter on your palm and hold it out toward the sun in a sunny day, that circle receives about 3W of energy (0.0254^2 * pi * 1361 = 2.76), i.e., greater than all the energy your body receives from a "Power Class 1" mobile phone (assuming you somehow magically absorb ALL its radiation).

Not to mention that the solar radiation actually contains ionizing UV rays. Sunlight is vastly more likely to cause cancer than cell phones. Literally.

If you're so worried about radiation, use sunscreen. You're welcome.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_constant

Thanks for the Strawman ! I did not expect this one. First, where did I ever write that I was worried about radiations ? I was simply clarifying what I meant when i said that the emissions were different between a wifi router and a mobile phone. If I say an apple and an orange are different, does it mean i'm worried about eating those?

> Not to mention that the solar radiation actually contains ionizing UV rays.

I guess the ozone layer is completely useless then. I'm glad I learn things on HN every day.

> Sunlight is vastly more likely to cause cancer than cell phones. Literally.

Where did I mention anything about Cancer ?

Didn't Congress just pass a law that makes it illegal to get brain cancer from your cell phone?

Police aren't allowed to troll through neighborhoods with heat sensors looking for pot-growers, so how is this that different?

The idea is that they are probing the contents of private homes without a warrant, no? What's the purpose of a warrant if the police can just scan the contents of your house from the street?

> My neighbours wifi router sends "powerful electronic signals" into my private home every day.

But it isn't sent by government agents "in order to collect information from within", which is a key factor in the description.

How is this not an illegal search in the same way that the use of infrared cameras has been shown to be?

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=93127

Infrared cameras look into your domicile while the StingRay looks for signals being sent out. They are not looking in to see what is there, they are capturing what is coming out. It is different enough to be litigated up to the Supreme Court.

That being said, I in no way support this. I have no choice but to use my phone which makes me into a tracking target.

In America it turns out we are all targets in order to exclude each one of us from being Terrorists. Police cars now capture license plates and upload them to a central database (plantir), the whole Internet is being captured and held for 3 days at a time while parts are being kept for longer, the outside of mail is being scanned and captured by the USPS, every major mail facility (fedex, ups, etc) are mandated to have federal agents who open mail and then re-seal it so you never know, etc and so on. I have had to double the tin foil on my hat because one layer is just not enough! It is getting crazy.

I also don't support this, but I don't see the distinction. You/your home is emitting the infrared radiation, just like the phone is emitting the signal.

Well, sure, it sounds bad when you phrase it like that.

anything sounds bad when you say it like that...

Perhaps you're forgetting that the police likely believed they were doing the right thing and attempting to bring a bad guy to justice.

It's not a popular sentiment on HN, but not all police officers are part of the shoot / oppress first, ask questions later school of policing.

> the police likely believed they were doing the right thing

You mean, just like TSA officers who believe that X-raying everyone who boards a plane is the right thing if we want to catch these darn terrorists?

>not all police officers are part of the shoot / oppress first, ask questions later school of policing.

But these were. You're creating a false dichotomy between cops who violate people's rights and cops who think that they're doing the right thing.

"It's not a popular sentiment on HN, but not all police officers are part of the shoot / oppress first, ask questions later school of policing."

To be fair, even those of that school like believe "they [are] doing the right thing and attempting to bring a bad guy to justice."

Literally everyone believes they are doing the right thing. Everyone justifies their actions, at least to themselves.

Law enforcement officers, of all people, should know and respect The Law, shouldn't they? I mean, "ignorance of the law is no excuse", and they are doing a special job which requires special knowledge, skills and care. So, I think that we can assume they knew they weren't doing "the right thing". Stingrays are pretty clearly against the spirit of American Democracy and Law Enforcement, as traditionally held.

Beyond that, the ends rarely justify the means, even legally. There are supposed to be limits to how the police find stuff out. See 4th Amendment. Traditional sense of fair play, decency, etc.

> Beyond that, the ends rarely justify the means, even legally.

The ends often justifies the means, even legally, its just that the cases where the proposition that the means used is justified by the ends served isn't controversial don't get any attention, in much the same way that you never see news stories of the form "Today, the following areas had no major earthquakes..."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com