FBI Surveillance Devices May Interfere with 911 Calls

Cellphone tracking devices commonly used by the FBI and other federal and local law-enforcement agencies have the potential to disrupt emergency 911 communications, a U.S. senator said this week, raising new concerns about whether the devices are a threat to individuals' personal safety.

In a Tuesday letter addressed to Attorney Gen. Jeff Sessions, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked the Department of Justice to be more forthcoming about the potentially disruptive nature of cell tower simulators -- also known as IMSI Catchers or Stingrays -- which law enforcement agencies and others use to covertly track suspects’ movements through their cellphones.

Citing conversations with unnamed executives from Harris Corporation, a Florida-based government contractor that makes a widely used cell tower simulator, Wyden wrote that the devices “completely disrupt the communications of targeted phones for as long as the surveillance is ongoing.”

The devices work by effectively posing as a cellphone tower and tricking targeted cellphones into connecting with them, giving the user a sense of where the targeted phone is located. They can also be used to eavesdrop or plant malware.

In a 2017 FBI search warrant request to track the phone of a drug trafficking suspect, for example, an FBI agent wrote that the devices “may interrupt cellular services” of nearby phones... Anything that significantly interferes with 911 is a problem.  (Washington Post, August 24, 2018)
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These Stingray cell site simulators are used by local police departments, not just by the FBI.

"In July 2018, Tacoma appealed a court decision that resulted in a nearly $300,000 payout after a judge ruled the city violated state law by withholding records related to a police surveillance device called a cell site simulator. The documents concerned the use of the surveillance device — known as a Stingray — which mimics a cell phone tower and compels all nearby devices — not just the target’s phone — to connect to it. That concerned the ACLU and other civil liberties or privacy-focused groups."

"By its very nature, then, the use of a cell site simulator intrudes upon an individual's reasonable expectation of privacy, acting as an instrument of eavesdropping and requires a separate warrant supported by probable cause," wrote NY state Supreme Court Judge Martin Murphy. - The question of course is whether police are obtaining warrants when they use these devices, and since the devices capture all cell-phones in the area how can a warrant ever be justified.

According to the Desert Sun (August 23, 2018) "the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said it used a cell-site simulator 231 times in 2017, but only 20 times for emergencies. The technology media outlet Ars Technica reported that San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department had used a cell-site simulator 201 times in 2014 and 102 during the first five months of 2015, all without search warrants."

What was once the military-industrial complex has rapidly transformed into a military-industrial information complex, with data flowing seamlessly between intelligence agencies and even local police departments, sending our society on slow descent into Orwellian dystopia.