Feds Admit Stingrays Can Disrupt Cell Service of Bystanders

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I'm not saying that this IS the reason you always have bad cell reception....I'm just saying it COULD be the reason. :eek:

But a court filing recently uncovered by the ACLU suggests another reason for the secrecy: the fact that stingrays can disrupt cellular service for any phone in their vicinity—not just targeted phones—as well as any other mobile devices that use the same cellular network for connectivity as the targeted phone.
Click to expand...
 
Ugh, how many "cellular networks" are there in this country? You plop one of these legally ambiguous devices in the middle of a populated city and it acts as a cell tower. What do you think happens from there?

I know all the local governments are being extremely hush about these things, but this "revelation" is definitely a no shit Sherlock.
 
westrock2000 - "this "revelation" is definitely a no shit Sherlock."

Exactly what I was thinking. Pretty sure they get away with most of their bullshi* because of ignorant judges approving whatever they need in the name of justice!
 
westrock2000 said:
Ugh, how many "cellular networks" are there in this country? You plop one of these legally ambiguous devices in the middle of a populated city and it acts as a cell tower. What do you think happens from there?

I know all the local governments are being extremely hush about these things, but this "revelation" is definitely a no shit Sherlock.
Click to expand...

Yeah, this should not be surprising to anyone.
 
Kevon said:
westrock2000 - "this "revelation" is definitely a no shit Sherlock."

Exactly what I was thinking. Pretty sure they get away with most of their bullshi* because of ignorant judges approving whatever they need in the name of justice!
Click to expand...

The judges are just following the letter of the law as enacted by the ignorant Congress. Congress was just doing what they thought the ignorant public that elected them wanted. The buck stops here.

...Err well you could blame the education system or the media I guess, but that's just a feedback loop. And somewhere in that chain of blame is Cheney's lawyer or maybe he's just another victim.
 
The problem with it disrupting cell phone service is... THAT IS ILLEGAL. Proper warrants or not, it is illegal and carries a hefty fine from the FCC. This is the reason they wont put cell phone jammers/disrupters in our around prisons.

So basically, the organizations are breaking the law by just operating these stingrays, REGARDLESS of court order.
 
Also keep this in mind in the article itself:
In order for the kind of stingray used by law enforcement to work, it exploits a vulnerability in the 2G protocol. Phones using 2G don’t authenticate cell towers, which means that a rogue tower can pass itself off as a legitimate cell tower. But because 3G and 4G networks have fixed this vulnerability, the stingray will jam these networks to force nearby phones to downgrade to the vulnerable 2G network to communicate.

So in essence, here is what is says on the FCC Website:

Sale or Use of Transmitters Designed to Prevent, Jam or Interfere with Cell Phone Communications is Prohibited in the United States, Public Notice, DA 05-1776 (2005).


If they have lied about this, in any case, they are supposed to be retried or dismissed. Because of the logs kept by the cell network/companies this would be very easy to verify by simply going through the logs in the areas in which these were used based on the warrant, and simply seeing if/when calls were dropped all together, jammed from 3 or 4g to 2g, etc. etc..
 
When I read the title I thought of the ocean based Ray. That lead to a few brief moments of hilarity as I imagined htf someone would take an ocean creature around jamming cell service and further how one would actually manage to jam electronic signals.
 
It's obvious that Law Enforcement isn't subject to any of the laws they are supposed to enforce.
 
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