OFF THE WIRE
I suggest everyone pay attention and do some research on any device
with Bluetooth, wifi, gps, camera, and microphone as they all have
vulnerabilities where government and hackers can listen, follow and even
hijack your devices. This includes, car Bluetooth, those insurance
computer chips to lower your rates, sat nav systems, baby monitors,
security systems, and course cell phones. The government has systems in
place to exploit them all. This isn't tin foil conspiracy stuff. This
is simple fact. They have approached every single manufacturer
requesting backdoors and you never know who has given in and which ones
they just worked without.
Be warned. Stingray is only the tip of the iceberg.
by
Kelly W. Patterson
This post was submitted by Sulu Kelley III, via the
CopBlock.org submissions page. Along with the submission, Sulu states:
If the judiciary is concerned, what outrage should the general public be displaying right now?

At least 2,000 cases in Baltimore, MD,
are being reviewed by defense attorneys
following recent revelations concerning police surveillance. Maryland
requires defense attorneys be informed about electronic surveillance,
which conflicts with the Non-Disclosure Agreements, or NDAs, which
police departments are required to sign before purchasing cell-site
simulators, or Stingrays.
These devices function by telling your phone that the device is a
cell tower, and pinging it for the phones location data. Simply removing
the battery from the phone is not sufficient to stop the location
signal. A device called a Faraday Cage, similar to that sold to protect
credit cards from RFID theft, is necessary to completely block the
location signal.
Consider what might happen if you were found holding a cellphone that
was tracked using this technology. In a current case in Baltimore,
Anthony Todd claims that he found a ringing phone under the porch of a
vacant house. Todd does not match the description of the person wanted
for the murder he is accused of, and surveillance video shows other
people looking at the porch the phone was allegedly found under.

The
key problem in the use of cell-site simulators lies in the NDA. That
agreement prohibits disclosing the use or existence of Stingrays to,
well, anyone. The knowledge of them seems to come out in things such as
invoices for training or “cellular equipment” that are obtained through
requests for public records.
This extends to motions for discovery in criminal cases. (These motions
are for when the prosecution, the government, tells the defendant, the
person accused of the crime, what evidence the prosecution has that the
accused committed the crime. This is so the accused can defend
themselves against the charge, and is a central concept to how our
criminal justice system is supposed to be organized.) If the accused is
unaware of how the evidence against them was gathered, then they cannot
mount a defense against it, by any number of methods. Questioning the
training of those who gathered the evidence, the accuracy of the
equipment, and the lawfulness of the method itself are the first three
methods which spring to this writers mind.
Even if these cases are reviewed by the defense attorneys, there is
no guarantee that a motion for a mistrial will be filed. It depends on
how the information was presented in court. If the cell-site simulator
was used to reverse-engineer a case, then there is no opportunity to
argue against its use, as it is not presented in court.

If
the defendant is not informed of the methods used, they cannot mount an
effective defense. This is an affront to our system of criminal
justice. The concept that an NDA could stand against discovery is best
summed up by Baltimore Circuit Judge Barry G. Williams addressing
Baltimore City Police Det. John L. Haley “You don’t have a nondisclosure
agreement with the court.” Judge Williams then threatened to hold
Detective Haley in contempt. In a related exchange, Florida Circuit
Court Judge Frank Sheffield thundered to the state’s attorney, Courtney
Frazier, that “Inhibiting law enforcement’s rights are second to
protecting mine!” As is apparent, when the judiciary is knowledgeable
about the use of these devices, there is concern over the safeguards in
place to protect the public from misuse.
-Sulu Kelley III
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