
U.S. Marshals Seize Cops’ Spying Records to Keep Them From the ACLU - pavel_lishin
http://www.wired.com/2014/06/feds-seize-stingray-documents/
======
wmeredith
Vote with your dollars, it's likely the most important vote you've got.

The ACLU single donation page is here: [https://www.aclu.org/secure/make-gift-
aclu-3?s_src=UNS140001...](https://www.aclu.org/secure/make-gift-
aclu-3?s_src=UNS140001C00)

The ACLU membership page is here: [https://www.aclu.org/secure/our-civil-
liberties-are-under-at...](https://www.aclu.org/secure/our-civil-liberties-
are-under-attack-1)

I have been an ACLU member for years, but am otherwise unaffiliated. Crap like
this is why I'm a member. They are on the front lines.

~~~
ghoul2
Kinda unrelated, but I have come across this "vote with your dollars" thing
way too many times, always by USians. I ask this out of genuine curiosity - no
criticism intended:

In a democracy, the most disproportionate power a regular citizen has is the
vote. Bill Gates (as an example) has exactly one, and so do you.

Dollars, on the other hand - Bill G has quite a few orders of magnitude more
than you. So many infact, that your "dollar votes" end up being a rounding
error either way - with him or against him.

You cannot hope AT ALL to win based on "voting with your dollars". But voting
with your votes, you just may stand a chance. What the US govt is doing, NSA
is doing - in the end it will have to be fixed in Congress, not in Courts. Not
by ACLU. But by people voting with their votes. Even congressmen are used to
"vote with dollars", and of course the supreme court has now made it official
that "dollars are free speech". All of that can be reverted with "vote with
votes" only - not with dollars.

Thats my belief, not being a USian. I am trying to understand why "vote with
your dollars" seems so popular and - well - _believable_ a concept in the US?
Isn't "voting with your dollars" a clear rejection of democratic power?

~~~
john_b
The U.S., by many measures, is not a democracy, but more closely operates as
an oligarchy [1].

If Bill Gates donates $100 million to a set of Congressional candidates who
then use that money to run campaigns, the additional money will have a
noticeable impact in the result. Assuming nobody is on the other side making
even larger donations, a higher percentage of Bill Gates' preferred candidates
will get elected than would have otherwise.

If it was just Bill Gates doing this, it probably wouldn't be that big of a
deal. But since the economic and political interests of a large percentage of
America's elite are highly correlated, you end up with a large amount of money
directed to candidates who support policies that benefit those elites.

In theory, your critique is correct. If every non-elite voted against the
elites, all of this money would be wasted. But in practice a lot of that money
gets used to convince the non-elites that their own interests will be served
by the same candidates who are receiving the money from the elites. It would
be called propaganda if it was done by the government, but since it's done by
private economic entities it's just considered a form of marketing.

The average American voter is not very informed beyond a few specific issues
(and often not even that). The result is that they can be easily overwhelmed
with information related to issues they are unfamiliar with. Political
campaigns in the U.S. like to portray these issues in dire terms. "My
opponnent is soft on crime! _Why? Because he voted for this obscure bill,
HR834109241027308, that you 've never heard of and couldn't interpret if you
tried_!" The implication is straighforward, but never directly said: "You and
your family will be safer by choosing me!"

You don't have time to research all of these claims and debunk them, even if
you have a good intuition for which ones are bogus and which are reasonable.
The fact that both major parties bullshit equally means that even if you did,
you'd still be trying to pick the most truthful liar out of the group. Some
people recognize this and give up on the process entirely. A lot of money is
spent trying to convince these people that _this candidate is different_ and
is worth your money, vote, and trust.

So you are correct that trying to out-money the monied interests is not a very
promising strategy for political reform in the U.S. But simply trying to out-
number them won't work since the average vote is so uninformed, subject to
pathos, and fundamentally cheap. Over a large population, the average vote is
all that matters. For this reason, small local elections in the U.S. tend to
function in a much more democratic and intelligent fashion than state or
national elections. The issues are less numerous, the stakes are lower
(implying lower ROI for political "investors"), and the voters are more
informed about what is happening in their own area.

Democracy, as discovered by the Greeks, is a fantastic political system for
local governance. But it doesn't scale. From a certain perspective, it is
impressive that the U.S. has scaled it as far as it has, given such a
numerous, heterogeneous, and geographically distributed population.

[1] [http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-
echochambers-27074746](http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746)

~~~
ghoul2
Thank you, that was quite cogently expressed.

I can't help but wonder if "voting with your dollars" is another one of those
things which has been drilled into the citizenry with - as you put it -
"...that money gets used to convince the non-elites that their own interests
will be served by the same candidates who are receiving the money from the
elites." Its an "arms race" that the "common people" CANNOT win. But getting
them bogged down in it makes for a very calm populace of consumers - they have
the power of the dollar, after all.

Thats the fundamental way to steal a democracy, isn't it? Convince the voters
that money is matters more, and is a more effective way for governance
decision-making. Heck, even get the Supreme Court to declare that money is
protected political speech!^1 Thats seems to be the foundation from where the
democratic rot builds itself.

1) When I first came across that in US news, I actually thought it was some
kind of Onion-esqe satire.

------
nilsimsa
"Recently, the Tallahassee police department revealed it had used stingrays at
least 200 times since 2010 without telling any judge because the device’s
manufacturer made the police department sign a non-disclosure agreement that
police claim prevented them from disclosing use of the device to the courts."

So just by signing an NDA, I'm not obligated to disclose information to the
court?

~~~
DannyBee
You actually are, and in fact, the convictions have started to be reversed as
a result of this ...

Good thing an NDA caused rapists/etc to go free!

~~~
jacquesm
> Good thing an NDA caused rapists/etc to go free!

No, good thing illegal behaviour by police departments was identified and
rightly led to overturning the convictions resulting from that behaviour.

Whether the perps were murderers, pot smokers or speeders (or innocents...)
does not matter.

~~~
whyenot
> Whether the perps were murderers, pot smokers or speeders (or innocents...)
> does not matter.

You might not agree if you were the victim or the victim's friends/family. The
evidence might have been illegally gathered, but it was also pretty damming.

I absolutely agree with what the ACLU is doing, but there is still a victim
and they will likely never see justice. It's a real failing of the US justice
system, and not something I'm personally comfortable in celebrating.

~~~
jacquesm
> The evidence might have been illegally gathered, but it was also pretty
> damming.

I know that this is hard to stomach, especially for the victims. But as a
society we've determined that convictions based on illegal evidence are a
bigger problem than the crimes they intend to punish. And by and large that is
a good thing, even if in individual cases it hurts like hell.

The alternative, a society where police can commit crimes in order to catch
criminals is much worse than a society where the police is still kept in check
by the law. In a really just society these officers would be charged.

~~~
DannyBee
" The alternative, a society where police can commit crimes in order to catch
criminals is much worse than a society where the police is still kept in check
by the law. In a really just society these officers would be charged."

I don't disagree, but there are alternatives to the exclusionary rule, like
massive civil liability (or even criminal liability for the police) instead of
the current qualified immunity regime.

If a group of police officers illegally obtains evidence, and goes
bankrupt/gets foreclosed on/etc for doing it, they are unlikely to do this
again.

In fact, i'd venture that qualified immunity has done more than anything else
to foster this culture of misconduct that the exclusionary rule was meant to
prevent. The likelihood of criminal charges against police in these cases was
always low.

I believe at this point, time has shown that the exclusionary rule is not
really an effective deterrent to police misconduct, whereas at least int he
US, real money might be.

(sad, but true).

As a complete aside, "we as a society" did not decide anything. The
exclusionary rule was judicially created, and very very recent (late 1900's).
Prior to that, illegal evidence was as good as anything else in the US.

------
ceejayoz
> In the Sarasota case, the U.S. Marshals Service claimed it owned the records
> Sarasota police offered to the ACLU because it had deputized the detective
> in the case, making all documentation in the case federal property.

This is pretty outrageous.

~~~
angersock
Brazen, really. They're not even trying anymore.

~~~
higherpurpose
Usually a sign of third world government/justice system. In such countries
they don't have to bother to hide their crimes because they know they have all
the power and no one will do anything to them. Unfortunately many in the US
law enforcement have started feeling like that, because in truth, usually
nothing happens to them when committing crimes either.

~~~
javajosh
Indeed. Usually the best accountability mechanism is internal to the
organization (or the person), but George W Bush demonstrated unequivocally
that if you absolutely refuse to hold yourself accountable, there's literally
nothing anyone outside your organization can do. It was like discovering a
superpower.

Loyalty is everything, principle nothing. So vilify whistleblowers, hold the
line against criticism. The important psychology here when behaving
unethically and illegally on behalf of your org is to remember that the org is
_defined to be good_ and if you criticize it, you will be _defined to be bad_
and moreover, there will be real-life consequences on the order of lost
career, imprisonment, or death. Another important feature these days is the
use of secret interpretations of law that justify breaking it, providing a
soothing balm to those who's consciences need it.

~~~
adventured
Did you mean Barack Obama? Or Bill Clinton? Or Ronald Reagan? Or Richard
Nixon? Or Lyndon Johnson? Or Franklin Roosevelt?

They all abused their power, often to extremes.

The illegal war Kennedy and Johnson put us into in Vietnam was _drastically_
worse than Iraq.

The only reason spy agencies under Nixon didn't do what they have under Bush
and Obama, is they lacked the technology to pull it off. That's the sole
reason it didn't happen sooner.

J Edgar Hoover was director of the FBI for 48 years, under numerous
Presidents, all of which were complicit in the abuses that took place. They
knew what he was and didn't stop him. Hoover would probably be doing worse
today than anything the NSA is doing, he lacked the technology, not the
willingness to violate the Constitution.

If FDR was willing to intern Japanese Americans during WW2, what kind of other
vile police state measures do you think he would have happily gone along with
had the technology existed to eg spy on every single American in 1941? He
absolutely would have brushed the Constitution aside, all he lacked was the
technology.

None of this mess began with Bush. And the Bush mentality is the opposite of
unique among Presidents. He's just one of many involved over decades of abuses
leading up to this point.

~~~
javajosh
I've heard this argument before. But Bush really was different. Nixon
_resigned_. Clinton was impeached (and eventually apologized) for lying about
Lewinski. Kennedy never had a chance to answer for Vietnam, nor FDR for
internment.

I don't know about Hoover, but my sense was that the presidents under which he
worked could not have removed him even if they wanted to.

Bush was innovative not because he lied, or cheated, or did vile things as
President, but because he chose to believe that he was right, no matter what
anyone said, or the reasons they gave, or the arguments they made. He simply
refused to accept facts that interfered with his own viewpoint, and incredibly
this worked. He hacked a system that relies on powerful wrong-doers to
cooperate with the prosecution to be effective. It's a kind of extra-legal 5th
amendment right reserved for captains of industry and state.

As for Obama, I'd argue that as our first black President he's been swept up
by the momentum of his predecessor, and has had to take very careful steps
lest he lose the support of the Bush-era bureaucrats. Is James Clapper above
executing an American coup? Clearly not, and Obama knows it. In essence, Bush
created a 21st century, high-tech, distributed Hoover that's impossible to
kill or even moderate, especially by a weak president.

Heaven help us all.

------
Jaecen
> the device’s manufacturer made the police department sign a non-disclosure
> agreement that police claim prevented them from disclosing use of the device
> to the courts.

I don't know where to begin with this, other than to say it's quite clear that
this police department is not interested in participating in the justice
system.

------
fiatmoney
The notion of "ownership" of public records is a bit tenuous to begin with.
You can own the paper (except they obviously don't, and you can make a copy on
your own paper), or you can own a copyright on particular documents (except
that US government documents, including municipalities, are public domain).

Really they're asserting some quasi-classification right to prevent a record's
release because they "deputized" the author, but it's pretty unclear under
what actual statutory authority they're operating.

~~~
rosser
17 U.S.C. § 105 only bars the _Federal_ government from holding copyrights on
works it created. Case law, however, holds that states and local governments
may retain copyright.

~~~
snarfy
So what. Release it. I'll take a copyright violation.

~~~
grecy
Given we're talking about the (ab)use of this stingray surveillance device,
who's (assumed) widespread use the feds don't want the average citizen to know
about, I suggest they would come down on you with enormous damages for that
copyright violation.

------
opendais
Yep, not an abuse of power at all. Seizing all the evidence to interfere with
a legal proceeding. This seems perfectly legit to me! /s

I'd hope that the U.S. Marshals [as a service] would have people fired for
this and a Judge would find whoever ordered this to be in contempt. However, I
really expect this just to be ignored beyond the ACLU/News reporting on it. :/

~~~
spiritplumber
At the very least if this does go to court, the judge is very likely to call
BS.

~~~
rosser
Depends entirely on the judge whose bench it ends up before.

------
logn
Defending against this would be a perfect use of Florida State Guard, as such
groups aren't controlled by the federal government. Unfortunately as of 1947,
Florida now only has the Florida National Guard which is under federal
control.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_State_Guard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_State_Guard)

For all the talk of 2nd Amendment (guns rights) advocates, I think they miss
the obvious use cases: well organized (and locally controlled) militias, such
as the Florida State Guard.

~~~
bmelton
> For all the talk of 2nd Amendment (guns rights) advocates, I think they miss
> the obvious use cases: well organized (and locally controlled) militias,
> such as the Florida State Guard.

That's because Florida outlawed them[1], along with many other states.

[1] -
[http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?mode=View%20St...](http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?mode=View%20Statutes&SubMenu=1&App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String=870.06&URL=0800-0899/0870/Sections/0870.06.html)

~~~
bashinator
Wouldn't outlawing militias be unconstitutional under the second amendment?

~~~
hga
Right now the Supremes are refusing to admit that it means _anything_ besides
having a right to have a gun in your home for self-defense. The "and bear"
arms minor detail just might as well not exist.

Militias, which the bare wording of that Florida law wouldn't quite seem to
outlaw (presumptively assume it was part of the general post-Reconstruction
effort to keep freedmen "in their place"; with the exception of efforts to
suppress dueling American gun control got it's start in that), aren't even
operationally part of the 2nd Amendment except as a justification for the RKBA
part, and that was basically a sop thrown at the Founders who disliked
standing armies but couldn't get far with veterans like Washington pointing
out the limits of militias.

I can go a lot further in this analysis if you wish, but one of the
foundational principles is above, a tension between the militias (safe but
less effective), "regulars" (less safe, more effective), and "select militias"
(utterly dangerous and not effective except in internal oppression).

Our Founders did not like the idea of select militias at all, the phrase had
connotations around the strength of e.g. Communist ... and surprise, surprise,
our modern, paramilitary police are very close to that definition. With
outsiders like the Federal Marshalls when they pull these sorts of stunts (see
also Ruby Ridge) pretty much fitting it to a T.

The other thing to initially look at is the Constitution's provisions for
militias. Outlawing them at the state level would negate the rights and duties
of the Congress about them ... something in part sidestepped with the creation
of the National Guard, which until _Heller_ made the point moot our betters
insisted were the militia.

------
winslow
Serious question. At what point do you think the public truly hits a tipping
point and lashes back at the government? Or are we just going to sit
unorganized and go back to our facebook and nightly entertainment. Personally
I think it will have to be an economy downturn worse than the housing bubble
to get the public to organize.

~~~
leorocky
Like how has this news affected your personal life at all. Did this action
diminish your capability to have a job of your choosing? Did it prevent you
from raising children? Did it prevent you from doing something you love? How
different is your life now? Because the voting public isn't going to care
unless their ability to live their life has been affected, and it hasn't.

------
javert
People in the future are going to be so confused. "If the Americans were the
first to systematically limit government power in a written constitution, why
did they just start ignoring it all of a sudden?"

~~~
eropple
It wasn't "all of a sudden". We've been doing it--sometimes for good reasons,
often times bad--since the country's inception.

"John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!" is two hundred
years old.

~~~
hga
Andrew Jackson's famous quote is actually part of the checks and balances in
the system, a guard against an out of control Federal Court system, even if
this example is awful.

The check against that is the ability of the Congress to impeach and convict a
President.

It should also be noted the Congress can remove anything they want from the
remit of the Supreme Court, and have done this more than a few times in the
past (generally or all also bad) and some in recent times.

Of the three branches, our Founders were supremely suspicious of the courts,
if you'll pardon the pun. Life tenure, insulated from political pressure aside
from impeachment and conviction, they've proven themselves to be equally
capable of doing ill as has the Congress and Presidents.

------
aagha
"Recently, the Tallahassee police department revealed it had used stingrays at
least 200 times since 2010 without telling any judge because the device’s
manufacturer made the police department sign a non-disclosure agreement that
police claim prevented them from disclosing use of the device to the courts"

What complete and utter BS. Does that mean that the DA too had no idea about
the use of stingray because the police couldn't tell them either. I think
figuring out who should know (and who shouldn't) is probably very very
selective!

------
rhizome
Who is going to be the first device manufacturer to provide Stingray
protection for their phones? Apple? Google?

~~~
X-Istence
It looks and acts like a normal cell phone tower... so there is no good way to
provide protection against it.

~~~
rhizome
Stingray apparently works by overloading signal over an area. I'm sure some
math comparing device motion with sudden-tower-appearance could be put
together into a reasonable heuristic.

~~~
X-Istence
Stingray works by having a stronger signal (It's closer to the user, kind of
like a wifi hotspot). This can happen at anytime anyway, carriers have put up
mobile towers before so that they can take down a single or multiple towers in
an area for maintenance, or to provide extra coverage.

Are there possible ways to detect it, possibly, but will there be a HUGE
amount of false positives, I fear there will be.

~~~
rhizome
My solution was only with 10 seconds of thought from a layman. I'm not even an
Electrical Engineer. I'm guessing the best-of-the-best in the Google-rola and
Apple-A7+ hives are capable of deeper thoughts on the issue. They're at least
closer to the point of contact from the tower than I am.

------
anonbanker
So, accept upon proof of claim that this wouldn't prejudice the rights of the
people of the state if the court gives full formal equity to the federal
marshalls, and that this wouldn't be a classic case of Champerty and
Maintenance[1].

Personally, I'm viewing this as another "pretend to fail" moment where they
claim something is an insurmountable roadblock, when it's easily solvable.

1\.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champerty_and_maintenance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champerty_and_maintenance)

------
nitrogen
Was this before or after
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7843618](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7843618),
or was this a separate case entirely?

------
contingencies
Added to Wikipedia over here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker)

If anyone wants to add more info, it's a worthy cause.

------
ianstallings
It just makes you wonder what they are hiding? Is it the capabilities of the
device or something else? I don't understand why the feds would get involved.
I hope they keep fighting to find out.

~~~
err4nt
I believe it's more information about how the department has been using it in
cases, records of the number of times it's been employed in the field, and I
don't doubt they are looking for uses where the police may have used it to
gather information illegally.

~~~
ianstallings
Yes but how would that involve the Federal government? That's really what I
mean, the involvement of the US government vs the state or local government.

------
MrBlue
Welcome to the USSA.

------
eyeareque
I knew the news yesterday was to good to be true.

