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Could do, and actually do do, are two different things. The government does not have the time to sift through everyone's emails. The earlier scare was carnivore (now DCS1000),
Carnivore (software - Wikipedia)
which turned out to be much ado about nothing once it was realized that it could only be used pursuant to court order, and was highly specialized in its target and focus.
For the average criminal, probable cause and search warrants still apply. -
I'm not suggesting they read through everyone's email. There's a set of criteria that flags people up. You could pop up as an alert on their system without even knowing it, through something you did inadvertently or because you fit the profile (sounds like eBay?).
This all comes back to there being over 10,000 ways to break the law, many people do and possess evidence of a crime without even knowing it. The issue is when everyone is treated as a suspect WITHOUT probable cause. Both Microsoft and Apple feed everything back to the government under the PRISM system.Comment
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"The City of San Diego has paid at least $365,000 to purchase the Stingray, a powerful and controversial surveillance tool that can locate and track cell phones, according to city documents that were recently released as part of an ongoing lawsuit."
This "Stingray" device may be used to "capture calls, emails, text messages and other data" of all cell phones in a localized area - it does not work beyond the reach of its local tracking ability. However, in San Diego the device has been set only to capture a phone's unique identifying number. This may be used in crime investigation. For example suppose there are a string of burglaries or robberies and the police have no idea who the culprits are. Police may use traditional search warrants of cell towers to find out what cell phones were present at the time of each crime. Eventually, they might be able to determine, through overlap and elimination, what phones were present at each crime event. Now, if those cell phones are traditional ones tied to real names and addresses, the investigation into who was there might end there. But nowadays many cell phones are untraceable, throwaway ones, or set with pay as you go carriers that do not require any real name or address to open an account. To track down these anonymous cell phone users, the police could use this Stingray, again only localized but in a mobile environment driving around town in areas where they suspect the targets might be, to track down those cell phones used in the crimes.
"The Stingray is a cell-site simulator. About the size of a shoe box, it works by tricking cellphones into connecting with it by acting like a cell tower. That allows police to determine the location of a phone."
This stingray has been released for use by the SDPD from the F.B.I. The F.B.I. is so sensitive about the workings of the device that they have mandated that the police will "seek dismissal of the case" rather than be forced to turn over any details of the workings of this device in court, such as pursuant to a defendant's subpoena.
This article is worth reading in full:
Page not found – San Diego Union-Tribune
just to show you the extent to which the government will go to operate secretly.Comment
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Yes the Stingray has been around for a while now. This kind of investigation is based on obtaining all devices that connected to a cell tower known as a 'tower dump' - which although not well documented typically a tower dump only retains connections for a few days at most - so the authorities need to act pretty quick in this type of case.
You'd think anybody who was up to anything by now would know to throw away their cell phone, but the authorities also depend on people's ignorance...Comment
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