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Baltimore Police Used Secret Technology to Track Cellphones in Thousands of Cases [+video]

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Photo Credit: Baltimore Sun

Photo Credit: Baltimore Sun

The Baltimore Police Department has used an invasive and controversial cellphone tracking device thousands of times in recent years while following instructions from the FBI to withhold information about it from prosecutors and judges, a detective revealed in court testimony Wednesday.

The testimony shows for the first time how frequently city police are using a cell site simulator, more commonly known as a “stingray,” a technology that authorities have gone to great lengths to avoid disclosing.

The device mimics a cellphone tower to force phones within its range to connect. Police use it to track down stolen phones or find people.

Until recently, the technology was largely unknown to the public. Privacy advocates nationwide have raised questions whether there has been proper oversight of its use.

Baltimore has emerged in recent months as a battleground for the debate. In one case last fall, a city detective said a nondisclosure agreement with federal authorities prevented him from answering questions about the device. The judge threatened to hold him in contempt if he didn’t provide information, and prosecutors withdrew the evidence. (Read more from “Baltimore Police Used Secret Technology to Track Cellphones in Thousands of Cases” HERE)

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U.S. Secretly Tracked Billions of Calls for Decades

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Businessman has stress - Mann schreit ins TelefonThe U.S. government started keeping secret records of Americans’ international telephone calls nearly a decade before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, harvesting billions of calls in a program that provided a blueprint for the far broader National Security Agency surveillance that followed.

For more than two decades, the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed logs of virtually all telephone calls from the USA to as many as 116 countries linked to drug trafficking, current and former officials involved with the operation said. The targeted countries changed over time but included Canada, Mexico and most of Central and South America.

Federal investigators used the call records to track drug cartels’ distribution networks in the USA, allowing agents to detect previously unknown trafficking rings and money handlers. They also used the records to help rule out foreign ties to the bombing in 1995 of a federal building in Oklahoma City and to identify U.S. suspects in a wide range of other investigations.

The Justice Department revealed in January that the DEA had collected data about calls to “designated foreign countries.” But the history and vast scale of that operation have not been disclosed until now.

The now-discontinued operation, carried out by the DEA’s intelligence arm, was the government’s first known effort to gather data on Americans in bulk, sweeping up records of telephone calls made by millions of U.S. citizens regardless of whether they were suspected of a crime. It was a model for the massive phone surveillance system the NSA launched to identify terrorists after the Sept. 11 attacks. That dragnet drew sharp criticism that the government had intruded too deeply into Americans’ privacy after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked it to the news media two years ago. (Read more from “U.S. Secretly Tracked Billions of Calls for Decades” HERE)

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The NSA Doesn’t Need to Spy on Your Calls to Learn Your Secrets; Facebook in Cahoots with US Surveillance Agencies

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NSAABy Bruce Schneier. Governments and coporations gather, store, and analyze the tremendous amount of data we chuff out as we move through our digitized lives. Often this is without our knowledge, and typically without our consent. Based on this data, they draw conclusions about us that we might disagree with or object to, and that can impact our lives in profound ways. We may not like to admit it, but we are under mass surveillance.

Much of what we know about the NSA’s surveillance comes from Edward Snowden, although people both before and after him also leaked agency secrets. As an NSA contractor, Snowden collected tens of thousands of documents describing many of the NSA’s surveillance activities. Then in 2013 he fled to Hong Kong and gave them to select reporters.

The first news story to break based on the Snowden documents described how the NSA collects the cell phone call records of every American. One government defense, and a sound bite repeated ever since, is that the data they collected is “only metadata.” The intended point was that the NSA wasn’t collecting the words we said during our phone conversations, only the phone numbers of the two parties, and the date, time, and duration of the call. This seemed to mollify many people, but it shouldn’t have. Collecting metadata on people means putting them under surveillance.

An easy thought experiment demonstrates this. Imagine that you hired a private detective to eavesdrop on someone. The detective would plant bugs in that person’s home, office, and car. He would eavesdrop on that person’s phone and computer. And you would get a report detailing that person’s conversations.

Now imagine that you asked the detective to put that person under surveillance. You would get a different but nevertheless comprehensive report: where he went, what he did, who he spoke to and for how long, who he wrote to, what he read, and what he purchased. That’s metadata. (Read more from “The NSA Doesn’t Need to Spy on Your Calls to Learn Your Secrets” HERE)

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Leave Facebook If You Don’t Want to Be Spied on, Warns EU

By Samuel Gibbs. The European Commission has warned EU citizens that they should close their Facebook accounts if they want to keep information private from US security services, finding that current Safe Harbour legislation does not protect citizen’s data.

The comments were made by EC attorney Bernhard Schima in a case brought by privacy campaigner Maximilian Schrems, looking at whether the data of EU citizens should be considered safe if sent to the US in a post-Snowden revelation landscape.

“You might consider closing your Facebook account, if you have one,” Schima told attorney general Yves Bot in a hearing of the case at the European court of justice in Luxembourg.

When asked directly, the commission could not confirm to the court that the Safe Harbour rules provide adequate protection of EU citizens’ data as it currently stands. (Read more from this story HERE)

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EPA Wants to Monitor How Long Hotel Guests Spend in the Shower

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants hotels to monitor how much time its guests spend in the shower.

The agency is spending $15,000 to create a wireless system that will track how much water a hotel guest uses to get them to “modify their behavior.”

“Hotels consume a significant amount of water in the U.S. and around the world,” an EPA grant to the University of Tulsa reads. “Most hotels do not monitor individual guest water usage and as a result, millions of gallons of potable water are wasted every year by hotel guests.”

“The proposed work aims to develop a novel low cost wireless device for monitoring water use from hotel guest room showers,” it said. “This device will be designed to fit most new and existing hotel shower fixtures and will wirelessly transmit hotel guest water usage data to a central hotel accounting system.”

The funding is going toward creating a prototype and market analysis for the device. The goal of the project is to change the behavior of Americans when they stay at hotels. (Read more from “EPA Wants to Monitor How Long Hotel Guests Spend in the Shower” HERE)

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Rental Car Company Installing Cameras in Their Vehicles

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This week I got an angry email from a friend who had just rented a car from Hertz: “Did you know Hertz is putting cameras in rental cars!? This is bullsh*t. I wonder if it says they can tape me in my Hertz contract.” He sent along this photo of a camera peeping at him from out of his “NeverLost,” a navigational device that the company has started putting in many of its cars.

“I even felt weird about singing in the car by myself,” he said. A Googling expedition revealed that my friend was not the first person driven to disturbance by the in-car surveillance system. A Yelp user was revved up about it. Disgruntled renters on travel forums like MilePoint and FlyerTalk want Hertz to put the brakes on “spy cams.” A loyal Hertz customer who rented a car in Chicago said it might make them never want to rent with Hertz again:

The system can’t be turned off from what I could tell. Further investigation revealed that the camera can see the entire inside of the car. I know rental car companies have been tracking the speed and movements of their vehicles for years but putting a camera inside the cabin of the vehicle is taking their need for information a little TOO FAR. I find this to be completely UNACCEPTABLE. In fact, if I get another car from Hertz with a camera in it, I will move our business from Hertz completely.

Hertz has offered the NeverLost navigational device for years, but it only added the built-in camera feature (which includes audio and video) to its latest version of the device — NeverLost 6 — in mid-2014. “Approximately a quarter of our vehicles across the country have a NeverLost unit and slightly more than half of those vehicles have the NeverLost 6 model installed,” Hertz spokesperson Evelin Imperatrice said by email. In other words, one in 8 Hertz cars has a camera inside — but Imperatrice says that, for now, they are inactive. “We do not have adequate bandwidth capabilities to the car to support streaming video at this time,” she said.

So why is Hertz creeping out customers with cameras it’s not using? “Hertz added the camera as a feature of the NeverLost 6 in the event it was decided, in the future, to activate live agent connectivity to customers by video. In that plan the customer would have needed to turn on the camera by pushing a button (while stationary),” Imperatrice explained. “The camera feature has not been launched, cannot be operated and we have no current plans to do so.” (Read more from “Rental Car Company Installing Cameras in Their Vehicles” HERE)

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Canadian Man Facing Jail Time for Not Giving up Cell Phone; Feds can do the Same Thing at U.S. Borders

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Canadian man Alain Philippon . . . flew into Halifax Stanfield International Airport last week, returning to his home country from the Dominican Republic, and border agents demanded that he enter the password to unlock his phone so they could search it, the CBC reported. . .

Philippon refused, saying the information on his phone was “personal.”

. . .In the U.S., the Fifth Amendment protects individuals from self-incrimination and as the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes, law enforcement generally needs a warrant to compel the unlocking of a phone or computer because providing the password is considered self-incriminating testimony by most courts.

However, as CNET noted, even though the Supreme Court has ruled that cops need a warrant to get a phone password, U.S. border agents don’t need a warrant or even individualized suspicion to conduct a “forensic” search of your phone or computer. . .

Philippon will go to court on May 12, facing charges of hindering border agents under Canada’s Customs Act, the CBC reported. (Read more from “Canadian Man Facing Jail Time for Not Giving up Cell Phone; Feds can do the Same Thing at US Borders” HERE)

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Here’s How Soldiers Reacted to Miniature Drones at an Army Experiment [+video]

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U.S. Army maneuver officials here just finished testing miniature drones and other high-tech soldier kit, much of which is designed to help infantry squads and platoons spot the enemy first.

From March 2 through March 5, soldiers from the Army’s Experimentation Force, or EXFOR, participated in the Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiment, an annual event aimed at evaluating innovative equipment with the potential to revolutionize infantry combat.

This year, the AEWE focused on 75 prototype technologies ranging from network communications gear to loadbearing kit, to sustainment and force protection equipment.

Many showed promise, but it was the pocket-sized Black Hornet and backpack-sized InstantEye unmanned aerial systems that captured the imaginations of 1st Platoon, A Company, 1st Battalion, 29th Infantry Regiment, the unit that makes up the EXFOR.

Hosted by the Maneuver Center of Excellence, the AEWE puts untested gear into the hands of infantrymen for a short period of intense field exercises. The experiment puts the EXFOR through a series of day and night missions and several fragmentary orders, or FRAGOs, to make test conditions as challenging as possible. (Read more from “Here’s How Soldiers Reacted to Miniature Drones at an Army Experiment” HERE)

Here’s a Reuters review of some European produced military drones:

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World’s Smallest Drone Shows Privacy May Be Dead Forever [+video]

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By Brad Reed. Privacy seems like such a quaint 20th Century concept, doesn’t it? Unbox Therapy has posted a video of the CX-10 Mini Drone, which is described as the world’s smallest drone and is a definite harbinger of things to come. In other words, it looks like privacy is finally toast . . .

All the same: At least with standard-sized drones there’s no way to miss them. If you’re being trailed by one or if one is hovering outside your window, there’s a decent chance you’ll see it. But as they get smaller and quieter as technology improves, they’ll be much harder to detect and will open up the door for every amateur NSA agent in your neighborhood to keep an eye on everything.

(Read more about the world’s smallest drone HERE)

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The First Drone Film Festival

By David Schneider. It shouldn’t take the whirring of a small drone to remind you that many people are awfully leery of these little aerial contraptions, fearing threats to privacy – and also to airliners.

But others see great benefits, particularly cinematographers, who are thrilled to make use of the unique perspectives drones can provide. Some of the best examples of what they can achieve will be screened March 6 and 7 at the first-ever “drone film festival” in New York City.


The inspiration for the festival came from Randy Scott Slavin, who is the founder and the festival director.

“I bought this thing called a DJI Phantom. It’s the iPhone of drones,” he says. “I had hours and hours and hours of footage around New York, and I finally decided to edit it.”

Randy put the film online and within the next couple of days, received calls from Fox News, Time magazine, Mashable and Gizmodo. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Health Checks by Smartphone Raise Privacy Fears

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Authorities and tech developers must stop sensitive health data entered into applications on mobile phones ending up in the wrong hands, experts warn.

As wireless telecom companies gathered in Barcelona this week at the Mobile World Congress, the sector’s biggest trade fair, specialists in “e-health” said healthcare is fast shifting into the connected sphere.

“It’s an inexorable tide that is causing worries because people are introducing their data into the system themselves, without necessarily reading all the terms and conditions,” said Vincent Genet of consultancy Alcimed.

“In a few years, new technology will be able to monitor numerous essential physiological indicators by telephone and to send alerts to patients and the specialists who look after them.”

More and more patients are using smartphone apps to monitor signs such as their blood sugar and pressure. (Read more about the health checks possibly being privacy concerns HERE)

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Private Drones are Spying on Phone Signals While the Feds are Using the Mysterious “StingRay” to Eavesdrop

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By Barry Levine. It was only a matter of time before drones started monitoring signals from mobile devices.

Since early February, several small drones flying around the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles have been determining mobile devices’ locations from WiFi and cellular transmission signals.

They are part of an experiment by Singapore-based location marketing firm Adnear, which has offices around the world. The firm told me that, to its knowledge, this is the first time an adtech company has employed drones to collect wireless data.

The capture does not involve conversations or personally identifiable information, according to director of marketing and research Smriti Kataria. It uses signal strength, cell tower triangulation, and other indicators to determine where the device is, and that information is then used to map the user’s travel patterns. (Read more about how the new drones are spying on the phones HERE)


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Secrecy Around Police Surveillance Equipment Proves a Case’s Undoing

By Ellen Nakashima. The case against Tadrae McKenzie looked like an easy win for prosecutors. He and two buddies robbed a small-time pot dealer of $130 worth of weed using BB guns. Under Florida law, that was robbery with a deadly weapon, with a sentence of at least four years in prison.

But before trial, his defense team detected investigators’ use of a secret surveillance tool, one that raises significant privacy concerns. In an unprecedented move, a state judge ordered the police to show the device — a cell-tower simulator sometimes called a StingRay — to the attorneys.

Rather than show the equipment, the state offered McKenzie a plea bargain.


Today, 20-year-old McKenzie is serving six months’ probation ­after pleading guilty to a second-degree misdemeanor. He got, as one civil liberties advocate said, the deal of the century. (The other two defendants also pleaded guilty and were sentenced to two years’ probation.)

McKenzie’s case is emblematic of the growing, but hidden, use by local law enforcement of a sophisticated surveillance technology borrowed from the national security world. It shows how a gag order imposed by the FBI — on grounds that discussing the device’s operation would compromise its effectiveness — has left judges, the public and criminal defendants in the dark on how the tool works. (Read more from this story HERE)

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