more like Claude Rains in the invisible man, the boy is an empty suit...
Posted on 06/12/2014 5:08:49 PM PDT by Second Amendment First
Fresh off the brazen move by U.S. Marshals to sweep up and hide a local police department’s use of “Stingray” technology to vacuum up cellphone data, the AP now reports that it was apparently a matter of policy.
The Obama administration has been quietly advising local police not to disclose details about surveillance technology they are using to sweep up basic cellphone data from entire neighborhoods, The Associated Press has learned.
Citing security reasons, the U.S. has intervened in routine state public records cases and criminal trials regarding use of the technology. This has resulted in police departments withholding materials or heavily censoring documents in rare instances when they disclose any about the purchase and use of such powerful surveillance equipment.
Federal involvement in local open records proceedings is unusual. It comes at a time when President Barack Obama has said he welcomes a debate on government surveillance and called for more transparency about spying in the wake of disclosures about classified federal surveillance programs.
One well-known type of this surveillance equipment is known as a Stingray, an innovative way for law enforcement to track cellphones used by suspects and gather evidence. The equipment tricks cellphones into identifying their owners’ account information and transmitting data to police as if it were a phone company’s tower. That allows police to obtain cellphone information without having to ask for help from service providers, such as Verizon or AT&T, and can locate a phone without the user even making a call or sending a text message.
But without more details about how the technology works and under what circumstances it’s used, it’s unclear whether the technology might violate a person’s constitutional rights or whether it’s a good investment of taxpayer dollars.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Wow....when the regime’s lost WaComPost....you know they’ve fallen hard and fast. Thwack!!
more like Claude Rains in the invisible man, the boy is an empty suit...
It is the most transparent administration ever. You can see right through its actions to destroy the nation, turn the population into drone servants of their self styled superior intellectual masters and make themselves the dictatorial rulers of the great unwashed. Transparent indeed.
And, if a judge decides that the use of this technology is unconstitutional then all cases prosecuted where it was used could possibly be reversed. (?)
Can we impeach this corrupt, constitution-trampling, power-grabbing traitor yet?
I think the commies are giving up on their boy, Barry Soetoro, in an effort to make Slick Willie’s wife look good to the low to no information types. The morons will buy anything.
Most transparent to our enemies...
Make no mistake. The evil obama regime is doing this for one reason. To maintain control and stay in power.
if the Obama regime is involved then you know it’s a violation of our Constitutional rights.
The reason this works is due to the radio inside your cellphone featuring little to no security and running on firmware that hasn’t changed in a decade. It has been posted before how vulnerable cell phones are with the only roadblock being how difficult it is to program in the language used by the radio hardware. It is also the reason it remains unchanged.
I see the gov has wasted no time exploiting this.
Ha, ha. Good one. The Compost isn’t “sure if the technology is unconstitutional or a good use of taxpayer dollars. “
What's the issue vis-a-vis transparency? This makes it clear that the members of the Administration are aged radical 1960s campus, spoiled, mau-mauing, Marxist-Alinsky, malcontents and their ideological litter. (And they are arguably the bulk of today's Establishment).
They are getting prepared for the next video protest.
what if everyone made a call at once?
I replaced my land line with what is really a big cell phone. It comes with a base and will operate multiple phones has caller ID, message center, call waiting, etc. I hear clicks and echoes on my end only, no one I call hears them. It is very cheap though and the cops kiss my butt.
I live in a small town which is basically a mini police state. The entire town has cameras from one end to the other, with little fat girls watching them,(I got most all my info from a cop new to the force who didn’t know better then to tell me, she has since shut up) when you go to the court house you got metal detectors, bulletproof glass over an inch thick, bio-metric camera when you get your drivers license renewed ( I asked and they told me it was), if you look at the courthouse with a military eye you notice a good sniper could cover pretty much the whole town, it is fire proof, the parking for it is two blocks away and weeds grow in it because no one uses it, (makes you wonder why they built the lot, don’t it?), and when I questioned a county mountie why a roadblock had been set up he let me know the Feds ordered it, I knew him from somewhere else and know he told me the truth. Pure intimidation from one end of this place to the other. The Feds paid to build the courthouse. Little town is in a good location between 2 important cities.
Big Brother is already here.
The 4th Amendment is all about what Feds can’t do - so locals using this technology isn’t the violation.
But if Obama orders locals to hide the technology, that’s tyrannical.
These governments are OURS. We need to know what this technology is - Should it be used to catch criminals or not? Can it be used as evidence to falsely entrap someone? (”Mr Gunclinger, our location data says you were at that 7-11 where the gun was fired.”) Etc.
I’m with you - this much damage can’t be an accident.
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