US Marshals spent $10m on equipment for warrantless Stingray surveillance

[unhappycamper]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/17/us-marshals-stingray-surveillance-airborne

Documents obtained by the ACLU show federal law enforcement agency bought hardware for possibly airborne surveillance of Americans’ cellphones

US Marshals spent $10m on equipment for warrantless Stingray surveillance
Nicky Woolf
Thursday 17 March 2016 10.00 EDT

The US Marshals Service spent more than $10m on secret, possibly airborne equipment and software for warrantless surveillance of Americans’ cellphones, documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have revealed.

The documents are heavily redacted, but they show that the Marshals Service purchased more than $10m in hardware and software from Harris Corporation, the manufacturer of the cellphone snooping device known as a Stingray, between 2009 and 2014.
IRS possessed Stingray cellphone surveillance gear, documents reveal
Read more

Stingrays are one of a class of sophisticated devices collectively called “cell-site simulators”. They work by pretending to be a cellphone tower to gather metadata, location information, and in some cases content from phones that connect to them.

Despite the efforts of some lawmakers, including Republican representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah and Democratic senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, Stingray use does not currently require a search warrant; merely an antiquated court order called a “trap-and-trace”, which was designed for obtaining phone records, not content, and represents a low judicial bar when used for devices as powerful as Stingray.

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Land of the Free? Really?