This is one of numerous high tech devices used by government for surveillance and for harassment. if this technology is for sale you can be certain that criminals have access to it, along with their government protectors. In recent months I have been unable to reach several government agencies to complain about police harassment and harassment by criminals. (Not that they will act or anything, but just so they cannot say I did not complain.) I suspect that technology is available and being used not only to listen in, to track and to gather meta data, but also to divert the calls. Land line calls can be diverted using computers, hacking into telephone company switches. This was reported several years ago by the New York Times. Criminals diverted calls to steal business from competitors. Over many years I would call a government agency and end up speaking to a Harvard University student. I suspect it is happening again. On occasion it is a Harvard University campus police employee. Other times it is an attorney employed by the university. And still others by persons pretending to be doctors. This is an area that most people can understand. But there are many other areas of technology used to inflict pain and to manipulate thought and human emotions. It is not written about and as in this case the government will deny it exists, do what it can to hide its existence, and its use. The ACLU is doing some work in this area. Their web site is at ACLU.org
[From article]
But before trial, his defense team detected investigators’ use of a secret surveillance tool, one that raises significant privacy concerns. In an unprecedented move, a state judge ordered the police to show the device — a cell-tower simulator sometimes called a StingRay — to the attorneys.
Rather than show the equipment, the state offered McKenzie a plea bargain.
[. . .]
McKenzie’s case is emblematic of the growing, but hidden, use by local law enforcement of a sophisticated surveillance technology borrowed from the national security world. It shows how a gag order imposed by the FBI — on grounds that discussing the device’s operation would compromise its effectiveness — has left judges, the public and criminal defendants in the dark on how the tool works.
[. . .]
The Tallahassee police used the StingRay or a similar device in more than 250 investigations over a six-year period, from mid-2007 through early 2014, according to a list of cases compiled by the Tallahassee Police Department and provided to the American Civil Liberties Union.
[. . .]
In Baltimore, a judge is pushing back against the refusal of police officers to answer questions while testifying. In Charlotte, following a newspaper investigation, the state’s attorney is reviewing whether prosecutors illegally withheld information about the device’s use from defendants.
In Tacoma, Wash., after a separate newspaper investigation found that judges in almost 200 cases had no idea they were issuing orders for the StingRay, the courts set new rules requiring police to disclose the tool’s use. The state legislature is weighing a bill to regulate police use of the equipment.
[. . .]
The FBI and Tallahassee police say that the device is used only with an appropriate court order and that they do not collect the content of calls or text messages. The FBI also said it retains only location data that is relevant to an investigation and immediately discards all other data.
So far, there is virtually no case law on how the Fourth Amendment — which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures — should apply to this technology.
[. . .]
In March, the defense team deposed police investigator Robert Newberry. The lawyers tried to get Newberry to explain how the police zeroed in on 3197 Springhill Rd. He mentioned the cell-tower records and then, under probing, acknowledged that they had not been sufficient on their own to locate the suspect.
He said a “Sergeant Corbitt” in the department’s technical operations unit had identified the phone’s location. “He would have to tell you how he got to that,” Newberry said, referring to Christopher Corbitt, who handles electronic surveillance operations.
[. . .]
Newberry could not fully explain how Corbitt determined the phone’s location. “I can’t address it because I don’t know the magic behind it,” he said.
[. . .]
But how did he know that the phone was in the house at 6 in the morning? The phone was a “burner” — one not registered under McKenzie’s name.
“We do have specific equipment that allows us to . . . direction-find on the handset, if necessary,” Corbitt said.
“What is that, and how does that work?” McMullen asked.
“I can’t go into that,” he said. “Due to [a] nondisclosure agreement with the FBI, we’re not able to get into the details of how the equipment operates.”
He acknowledged that the device was a cell-tower simulator.
[. . .]
He said that if the defense wanted more specific information, then he had “a specific protocol” to follow requiring him to notify the FBI and the Justice Department.
[. . .]
In June, in response to a motion for public access by the ACLU, the state released a transcript from a closed court hearing in 2010 relating to a Tallahassee rape case in which Corbitt testified that he had used a cell-site simulator to identify a suspect in an apartment complex. “In essence, we emulate a cellphone tower,” he said. “We force that handset to register with us. We identify that we have the correct handset and then we’re able to — by just merely direction-finding on the signal emanating from that handset — we’re able to determine a location.”
[. . .]
“Using portable equipment,” he said, “we were able to actually basically stand at every door and every window in that complex and determine, with relative certainty . . . the particular area of the apartment that that handset was emanating from.”
He said the Tallahassee police began using the device in the spring of 2007. From that point until August 2010, he said, the police had used it “200 or more times” to locate a cellphone.
How reliable was it? “Truthfully,” he said, “100 percent.”
[. . .]
The state’s attorney, Courtney Frazier, argued that details of the equipment’s operation were protected from disclosure under a law enforcement exception to the state open-records law.
Sheffield broke in. “What right does law enforcement have to hide behind the rules and to listen in and take people’s information like the NSA?” he said.
Frazier protested that the information about the device was sensitive and that disclosure could inhibit the police’s ability to catch criminals.
“Inhibiting law enforcement’s rights are second to protecting mine!” Sheffield thundered, gesturing with both hands and fixing his gaze on the prosecutor.
[. . .]
On Dec. 2, Sheffield signed the subpoena forcing Tallahassee police to show the device they used.
Two days before Corbitt was due to show up with the device, McMullen received notice of the plea deal from the prosecutor. She had never gotten such a sweet deal on a case.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/secrecy-around-police-surveillance-equipment-proves-a-cases-undoing/2015/02/22/ce72308a-b7ac-11e4-aa05-1ce812b3fdd2_story.html?hpid=z1
Secrecy around police surveillance equipment proves a case’s undoing
By Ellen Nakashima
February 22, 2015
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