

Help MuckRock crowd-FOIA Stingray usage around the country - morisy
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2014/jun/16/help-foia-how-police-across-country-are-watching-u/

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mpyne
I wish you guys the best.

But it does make the whole "USA IS A POLICE STATE!!!1" claims a bit harder to
take seriously. I keep trying to imagine East German civil libertarians
publically crowd-sourcing requests to the Stasi to divulge the particulars of
their surveillance appartus, in ways that don't result in the murder of
themselves or their families.

I don't mean this to be snide though, this kind of civil action and distrust
of authority is precisely what it means to be an American, and precisely what
is needed to ensure that our various police forces don't actually become a
modern day Stasi, so keep it up! :)

~~~
morisy
We're not claiming a police state, and certainly not the Stasi. I typically
assume good faith on all sides, and I do genuinely believe that the program is
being promoted by people with either the best intentions or simply trying to
make a buck with easy federal money flowing, no sinister plot for a police
state intended.

But it's now pretty well documented that the federal government is currently
encouraging, sometimes by force, local agencies to violate their state laws in
order to keep secret a widespread federal program that has, at least by one
circuit court, been found illegal.

Given past experience, it's probably also incredibly wasteful, and without
this you're giving local police that can literally barely operate a thumb
drive the surveillance equivalent of a flamethrower, and just hoping nothing
goes wrong.

In other words, I don't think we're trying to expose a New World Order so much
as a lot of legal and practical problems just waiting to explode.

~~~
mpyne
Yes, I should have made it more clear that I was piggybacking on this story to
make a more general observation.

As a member of the military myself, the increasing militarization of law
enforcement in the U.S. is something that has me concerned, which is why I
hope your efforts are successful in identifying (and fixing!) any of the legal
and practical problems with new technologies in the hands of untrained police
departments.

~~~
virtue3
Hey it's not like there's script kiddies out there that like to send over
militiarized and bored SWAT teams into unsuspecting houses for no reason at
all. Oh, right.

[https://news.vice.com/video/swatting](https://news.vice.com/video/swatting)

Because well-off suburban NJ needs a federally granted armored vehicle for...
who knows what.

You and me both are terrified.

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tesq
Very surprised that a search for my local police department and a few terms
like 'stingray' or 'cell phone tracking/privacy/tapping/gps' yielded more
results than expected along with a state SC case initiated because of the
actions taken by our department. Not specific to Stingray usage, but I still
filed a request.

I hope this campaign successfully increases the awareness and insight into the
fact that this is happening everywhere and has been for close to a decade.

~~~
morisy
Thanks tesq!

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dmix
I was planning to donate but it requires subscribing to Beacon with monthly
recurring donations and you get a CD/thumbdrive? I just wanted to throw some
one-time cash their way ala kickstarter. I don't really care about
subscriptions/CDs.

~~~
morisy
Thanks for the feedback!

That was the template Beacon Reader gave us and how they're set up. We're
looking at building out our own donation tools to enable one-time, zero-signup
donations, but not quite there yet (we do take PayPal at info@muckrock.com
though).

~~~
latj
I'm under the impression that FOIA does not apply to records at state or local
level. Am I wrong?

~~~
morisy
You are correct, but every state has its own equivalent. We handle all 50
states' rules and customize it as appropriate.

~~~
pasbesoin
I'm guessing you're not active there, but maybe you know someone / some outfit
that is. I would assume Canadian authorities are also snapping this equipment
up.

A while back, I knew someone who played a significant role in helping pass a
FOIA-like measure in British Columbia. (I'm no longer in touch with them.)

If various U.S. authorities remain uncooperative, I'm not overly hopeful about
Canadian, but maybe?

And while I guess that wouldn't focus on U.S. authorities' _use_ of what is
already a fairly well understood technology, I bet a few Canadians would like
to know when and how this technology is being used up there.

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maxoptical
The manufacture and use of Stingray type equipment is clearly in violation of
Federal law and is punishable by up to ten years in prison. Two parties
conspiring to infringe on a citizens civil rights. Read for yourself.

[http://www.justice.gov/crt/abo..](http://www.justice.gov/crt/abo..).

It is also agains FCC rules with 2 years in prison on $50,000 fine.

Section 705 of the Communications Act

Section 705 of the Communications Act adds to the Federal Wiretap Act
additional restrictions on the unauthorized interception of communication "by
wire or radio." Specifically, the Act provides

No person not being authorized by the sender shall intercept any radio
communication and divulge or publish the existence, contents, substance,
purport, effect, or meaning of such intercepted communication to any person.
No person not being entitled thereto shall receive or assist in receiving any
interstate or foreign communication by radio and use such communication (or
any information therein contained) for his own benefit or for the benefit of
another not entitled thereto. No person having received any intercepted radio
communication or having become acquainted with the contents, substance,
purport, effect, or meaning of such communication (or any part thereof)
knowing that such communication was intercepted, shall divulge or publish the
existence, contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning of such
communication (or any part thereof) or use such communication (or any
information therein contained) for his own benefit or for the benefit of
another not entitled thereto.Violations of Section 705 carry strict penalties,
with willful violations "for purposes of direct or indirect commercial
advantage or private financial gain" meriting fines of up to $50,000 and
prison for up to two years for the first offense.

------
ianpenney
Pretty neat, and somewhat relevant: [https://github.com/SecUpwN/Android-IMSI-
Catcher-Detector](https://github.com/SecUpwN/Android-IMSI-Catcher-Detector)

------
fks
...huh?

~~~
morisy
If you fill out the form on the page, we'll submit a request to your local
police department, asking for policies, invoices, etc. that will detail if and
how they're using cell phone scanning technology (including Stingrays), and
even what vendors have unsuccessfully pitched them on the technology.

~~~
leorocky
Reading this post made it seem like muckrock is more of a ideologically driven
site than a neutral data dump. Which is totally OK, but I was thinking maybe
it be nice to just to have a place to get data regardless of the topic or how
it fits in with a particular set of opinions.

So I'm all for using FOIA to make public data accessible for the greater good,
but I'm not sure if what you're doing is the right approach.

~~~
morisy
Anyone can sign up for and file any request through the site, and the request
pages are about as neutral as can be
([http://j.mp/UG3TMB](http://j.mp/UG3TMB)). We also publish news, analysis and
commentary on select documents, but that's handled fairly separately, so if
you just want the raw docs, that's very easy; if you want to better understand
why they're important, we try to make that easy, too.

We don't typically take too many ideological stances except that agencies
should probably follow the public records laws that they're subject to, which
generally isn't too controversial an opinion. We're looking for other ways to
allow more analysis and context, but keeping the data clean and easily
accessible will always be a part of what we do.

~~~
schoen
You might say that there is an implicit ideology in what kinds of government
activities people find interesting or concerning. For example, the _Sacramento
Bee_ has made great use of CPRA to find out about things that went wrong in
the construction of the new Bay Bridge. Other people are concerned about
government surveillance and send a lot of requests to try to expose
information about it. Not everyone finds it intuitive that the ability of
police to know your cell phone's location is a concern on par with the quality
of the welding in the Bay Bridge.

~~~
nknighthb
I don't drive over the bay bridge. Nobody I know regularly drives over the bay
bridge. Nothing I buy is likely to be transported over the bay bridge. I don't
even live in the same state as the bay bridge anymore. By and large, the bay
bridge just doesn't have any significance to me.

I, like every other person in America, do live within the jurisdiction of a
law enforcement agency that may be buying/using this technology.

It seems strange to suggest that an entity must be ideologically driven
because it's focusing on something that affects an entire country instead of a
distinctly local issue.

~~~
schoen
I guess I meant to compare concerns about the Bay Bridge with concerns over
whether SFPD or OPD has IMSI catchers (or drones), rather than over whether
any law enforcement agency anywhere has them.

A very significant fraction of public records requests relate to something
that the requester is concerned about or objects to or fears is being
mishandled in some way. Deciding where to focus one's concerns and questions
could be viewed as ideological, or at least ideological concerns help make
particular topics more salient and interesting to people.

By way of analogy, take a look at the series of questions that these
journalists decide to pose to Victoria Nuland, then spokeswoman for the U.S.
Department of State, about the activities of European election observers in
Texas during the 2012 elections there:

[http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2012/10/199824.htm](http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2012/10/199824.htm)

Obviously journalists have the right to ask Ms. Nuland about anything that
interests them, and supporting that right isn't (very) ideological (within the
U.S. political context). But it seems pretty clear that the line of
questioning that they were pursuing was inspired by a concern or belief that
Ms. Nuland herself didn't share: that there was something improper or
disturbing about European international institutions observing an election in
Texas.

If you share that belief, you might find the questioning pretty natural and
obvious and even wish that it had been pursued a bit further and uncovered
more information about the relationship between the U.S. and OSCE. If you
don't share that belief, you might find the questioning perplexing or
annoying, and be bewildered that the journalists didn't accept Ms. Nuland's
perfectly reasonable replies.

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AznHisoka
Your name sounds an awful lot like MuckRack.

