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I hope you’re hungry, because here’s a whopper: The FBI director has publicly defended his organization’s use of non-disclosure agreements to prevent local police departments from releasing documents about their use of controversial surveillance technologies, despite the fact that these technologies have been widely discussed in media outlets for years. What’s his justification for this policy? Bad people.
The surveillance technology in question is the stingray, also known as a cell site simulator or IMSI catcher. The device allows law enforcement (or criminals or anyone else who possesses one) to get around the tiresome exercise of issuing legal orders to telephone companies to track the precise physical locations of cell phones. Instead of going to AT&T with a court order or a warrant to conduct real-time cell phone location tracking, the feds and local cops can use stingrays to track phones all on their own. The devices trick cell phones into thinking they are cell phone towers, so phones within range of them will send information to the cops instead of to your cell phone company. Pretty tricky. Also, as a cursory Google search reveals, pretty widely known!
That’s why it’s so strange to find that police departments are still telling journalists and other interested members of the public that they cannot disclose any information about their use of cell site simulators. And it’s why it’s doubly strange to hear the FBI director defend his agency’s practice of forcing police departments into signing non-disclosure agreements that supposedly prevent them from acknowledging even the existence of a stingray to the public or the press.
Comey’s rambling justification of this antidemocratic practice is unsurprisingly outrageous. Somewhat surprisingly, it’s also entirely misleading.
Here’s what he says:
We’re talking about using a device to find the location of a particular individual, and where they might be using their cell phone. It’s not about intercepting their calls, their communications, ok. We can’t listen to the content of their calls without a court order. It may be about finding what cell tower someone’s phone is pinging off of. And with appropriate authority, we the feds, and our local brothers and sisters have to be able to do that to investigate all kinds of things. It’s how we find killers. It’s how we find kidnappers. It’s how we find drug dealers. It’s how we find missing children. It’s how we find pedophiles. So it’s work that you want us to be able to do. Again, appropriately, with appropriate authority overseeing it.
But to me it’s not about—I don’t mean to accuse you of asking a trick question but you used the term ‘bulk collection’? That means something very different to me. And also ‘collection’ to me means something very different, right. This is not about the content of people’s communications, or collecting every number that they dial, right, to me it’s about, we are using some equipment, appropriately in my view, to find bad guys. I don’t want to say too much about that, because I don’t want the bad guys to know, right, how we might be able to find them.
It’s one of the reasons that we ask local authorities who are working with us and using our equipment not to talk about it. It’s not cuz they’ve got something to hide from good people, I got a lot to hide from bad people. So that’s how I think about it.
Wow! This is a stunning series of statements, not least because the FBI director apparently doesn’t understand how stingrays work.
(read more at Privacy SOS)
