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In 2013, Daniel Rigmaiden - facing life in prison for 35 counts each of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft - was offered a surprise deal by federal prosecutors.
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They knew that he had uncovered an obsessively kept secret: that he had been caught with a surveillance device called a "Stingray" - a fake cellular tower that tricked phones into leaking their owners' identities to its operators.
https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/13/10758380/stingray-surveillance-device-daniel-rigmaiden-case
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https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/13/10758380/stingray-surveillance-device-daniel-rigmaiden-case
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Stingrays were made by the Harris Corporation, a notorious arms dealer. They came with onerous secrecy requirements that the feds enforced with criminal ruthlessness, like ordering cops to lie on the stand about how they caught their suspects.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140620/10271327635/new-emails-show-that-feds-instructed-police-to-lie-about-using-stingray-mobile-phone-snooping.shtml
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https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140620/10271327635/new-emails-show-that-feds-instructed-police-to-lie-about-using-stingray-mobile-phone-snooping.shtml
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Then it escalated to a French farce with a soupcon of police-state commando raids, when federal cops started raiding local police departments to steal their records so they couldn't be entered into evidence in trials.
https://www.wired.com/2014/06/feds-seize-stingray-documents/
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https://www.wired.com/2014/06/feds-seize-stingray-documents/
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Stingrays are a brutal reminder of the idiocy of "NOBUS" ("No one but us"), the US surveillance agencies' practice of deliberately creating and/or preserving defects in widely used systems so they can target their adversaries with them.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/08/fcc-created-stingray-problem-now-it-needs-fix-it
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https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/08/fcc-created-stingray-problem-now-it-needs-fix-it
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By preserving and exploiting - rather than reporting and repairing - the defects in cellular networks, the US government paved the way for criminal enterprises that fielded their OWN Stingrays, to track and infect their victims' phones.
https://blog.checkpoint.com/2017/03/21/swearing-trojan-continues-rage-even-authors-arrest/
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https://blog.checkpoint.com/2017/03/21/swearing-trojan-continues-rage-even-authors-arrest/
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By 2018, our cities were blanketed with mysterious Stingray devices - 40 were found in DC alone, presumed to be operated by foreign spies, criminal gangs, private espionage outfits, and US law enforcement agencies.
https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/potential-spy-devices-which-track-cellphones-intercept-calls-found-all-over-dc-md-va/2037263/
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https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/potential-spy-devices-which-track-cellphones-intercept-calls-found-all-over-dc-md-va/2037263/
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The US officials who deliberately weakened the US's mobile security insists it's a small price to pay for foiling major crimes. A closer look reveals that the major uses for Stingrays were penny-ante stuff, like tracking down an undocumented waiter.
https://theintercept.com/2017/05/19/feds-used-secretive-phone-tracking-tool-to-hunt-down-undocumented-immigrant/
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https://theintercept.com/2017/05/19/feds-used-secretive-phone-tracking-tool-to-hunt-down-undocumented-immigrant/
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And of course, this summer's #BLM uprising saw Stingrays get a major workout as local law enforcement engaged in mass, warrantless surveillance of democratic protesters.
https://theintercept.com/2020/07/31/protests-surveillance-stingrays-dirtboxes-phone-tracking/
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https://theintercept.com/2020/07/31/protests-surveillance-stingrays-dirtboxes-phone-tracking/
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Now, @Gizmodo reports that Harris has gotten out of the Stingray business, discontinuing sales and support for the existing units in the field. The likely cause is 5G, which requires a major retooling for this kind of surveillance.
https://gizmodo.com/american-cops-turns-to-canadian-phone-tracking-firm-aft-1845442778
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https://gizmodo.com/american-cops-turns-to-canadian-phone-tracking-firm-aft-1845442778
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But (according to @dmehro and @dellcam) US cops have a new arms-dealer, the Montreal-based Octasic, whose Nyxcell V800/F800 TAU cellular surveillance devices are marketed in the USA by Tactical Support Equipment of North Carolina.
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Octasic's engineers seem to be headquartered in India, a country that, this year, saw the longest-ever internet shutdown of any country in the world, combined with mass-scale mobile surveillance.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/indias-internet-shutdown-in-kashmir-is-now-the-longest-ever-in-a-democracy/2019/12/15/bb0693ea-1dfc-11ea-977a-15a6710ed6da_story.html
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/indias-internet-shutdown-in-kashmir-is-now-the-longest-ever-in-a-democracy/2019/12/15/bb0693ea-1dfc-11ea-977a-15a6710ed6da_story.html
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US police departments are funneling millions to this Canadian firm. Canada's own law enforcement has a terrible track record with Stingrays, having secretly (and illegally) used them for years:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/yw3zev/the-rcmp-has-been-using-surveillance-gear-under-an-interim-policy-for-6-years
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https://www.vice.com/en/article/yw3zev/the-rcmp-has-been-using-surveillance-gear-under-an-interim-policy-for-6-years
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If you want to understand more about Stingrays, @EFF's Threat Lab published an indispensible guide to the technology in 2019 that I highly recommend:
https://www.eff.org/wp/gotta-catch-em-all-understanding-how-imsi-catchers-exploit-cell-networks
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