re: Police Stingray Tech: Remember, the State Protects Your Privacy

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Strangely enough, he waged an intense war on the Federal Reserve and CIA during his presidency. For that I heartily commend him.

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Flawed a figure as he was, I sincerely believe he had the nation's best interests at heart - perhaps that makes me naive.

I cannot say that about any of his democratic successors in the office, with the possible exception of Carter (and we know the paving material for the road to hell).

For that matter, Reagan was the last great "conservative" - whatever meaning that term holds now.

I hope that Rand Paul can become the first great "libertarian" president - perhaps the NSA/Snowden/CIA spying on journalists/IRS targeting on political grounds can become the teaching moment for privacy advocates at both ends of the political spectrum (or perhaps at the edge of 3 axes?) to come together actually vote for actual restoration of liberties lost or eroded in the past, instead of putting "more of the same" people who care nothing of liberty, except to give it lip service to get elected.

Paul is the only guy I see who is even close to this category of person, who is also electable.

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Police across the country may be intercepting phone calls or text messages to find suspects using a technology tool known as Stingray. But they're refusing to turn over details about its use or heavily censoring files when they do.

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Pretty sure that's not how a stingray-type device works. From what I've read it is only used to locate mobile devices. Not sure where that writer is coming up with this.

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Because documents about Stingrays are regularly censored, it's not immediately clear what information the devices could capture, such as the contents of phone conversations and text messages, what they routinely do capture based on how they're configured or how often they might be used.

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There have been many news stories that discuss what stingray devices do

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Stingrays are designed to locate a mobile phone even when it's not being used to make a call. The Federal Bureau of Investigation considers the devices to be so critical that it has a policy of deleting the data gathered in their use, mainly to keep suspects in the dark about their capabilities, an FBI official told The Wall Street Journal in response to inquiries.

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The FBI says it obtains appropriate court approval to use the device. Stingrays are one of several new technologies used by law enforcement to track people's locations, often without a search warrant. These techniques are driving a constitutional debate about whether the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, but which was written before the digital age, is keeping pace with the times.

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A stingray works by mimicking a cellphone tower, getting a phone to connect to it and measuring signals from the phone. It lets the stingray operator "ping," or send a signal to, a phone and locate it as long as it is powered on, according to documents reviewed by the Journal. The device has various uses, including helping police locate suspects and aiding search-and-rescue teams in finding people lost in remote areas or buried in rubble after an accident.

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The U.S. armed forces also use stingrays or similar devices, according to public contract notices. Local law enforcement in Minnesota, Arizona, Miami and Durham, N.C., also either possess the devices or have considered buying them, according to interviews and published requests for funding.

The sheriff's department in Maricopa County, Ariz., uses the equipment "about on a monthly basis," says Sgt. Jesse Spurgin. "This is for location only. We can't listen in on conversations," he says.

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Experts say lawmakers and the courts haven't yet settled under what circumstances locating a person or device constitutes a search requiring a warrant. Tracking people when they are home is particularly sensitive because the Fourth Amendment specifies that people have a right to be secure against unreasonable searches in their "houses."

"The law is uncertain," says Orin Kerr, a professor at George Washington University Law School and former computer-crime attorney at the Department of Justice. Mr. Kerr, who has argued that warrants should be required for some, but not all, types of location data, says that the legality "should depend on the technology."

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