It's been ages since I tweeted about #stingrays /Cell Site simulators/IMSI catchers which are a massive privacy & security concern, so a short #THREAD
/1 Stingrays are devices that mimic cell site towers; cell phones connect to them and give up location & identification data aclu.org/issues/privacy…
/2 Stingrays thus are capable of broad, non specific searches, which creates serious privacy, 1st amendment & 4th amendment search & seizures issues, especially given the requirement that searches be particularized; stingrays gather data from all devices nearby;
/3 and they are popular- used by state and federal law enforcement; as per ACLU, 75 agencies in 27 states and the District of Columbia have them aclu.org/issues/privacy…
/4 do you need a warrant to deploy a stingray? a Florida appeals court says yes techdirt.com/articles/20180…
/5 does law enforcement always get a warrant before they deploy a stingray? No, although that may be changing. usatoday.com/story/news/201…
/6 Stingrays are of course sold to the private sector as well and have been observed in use for industrial and plain old espionage; bizjournals.com/bizjournals/ho…
/7 Stingrays have been found attached to the light poles in parking lots of defense contractors in Washington D.C., detected near the labs of high technology companies & military bases, and have even been used to spy on governmental offices in Norway.
/8 And of course, stingrays & newer tech (here's a Harris Company's catalog, h/t to @VICE vice.com/en_us/article/…) reportedly can be used to actually deploy malicious code into phones- i.e. injection attacks
@VICE /9 what can we do? Stingray monitoring /injection attacks leave forensic signatures that forensic experts can identify.
Companies may limit access to sensitive information by devices w/ cellular connections.
Companies may limit access to sensitive information by devices w/ cellular connections.
@VICE /10 Although there are apps out there that purport to notify you if you're around a suspect cell tower, it's not clear if they are reliable or effective wired.com/story/stingray…
@VICE /11 Carpenter, a case decided by the SCOTUS in 2018, held that we have Constitutional protection from unreasonable search & seizure w/o a warrant when the govt tracks our location- this should be the nail in the coffin for unwarranted stingray use. epic.org/amicus/locatio…
@VICE /12 for more on the interplay between Carpenter and Stingrays, check out this article by Harvey Gee making the argument more eloquently than I am capable: gould.usc.edu/students/journ…
