Questions about the legality of the secretive cell phone surveillance tool known as “Stingray” are being raised as the use of the device, originally billed as a counterterrorism tool, expands into everything but cases related to terrorism.

Unfortunately this is just one of many methods of surveillance – all of which are increasing dramatically – used by the government, law enforcement and even the private sector.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called Stingrays “the biggest technological threat to cell phone privacy you don’t know about” and “an unconstitutional, all-you-can-eat data buffet” in October of last year and unfortunately it has only become more important since then.

The Stingray essentially dupes cell phones into treating the device as if it were a real cell phone tower, thus allowing “the government to electronically search large areas for a particular cell phone’s signal—sucking down data on potentially thousands of innocent people along the way,” as the EFF puts it.

The major problem is that law enforcement has used them while circumventing the need for individualized warrants as the Constitution requires.

Since this is dragnet surveillance, anyone and everyone can be targeted by the device without a warrant being issued for the search and seizure of their data.

In late January, LA Weekly reported that Stingray while “intended to fight terrorism, was used in far more routine LAPD criminal investigations 21 times in a four-month period during 2012, apparently without the courts’ knowledge that the technology probes the lives of non-suspects who happen to be in the same neighborhood as suspected terrorists.”

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) was able to purchase their device thanks to a 2006 grant from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Keep in mind, DHS funds many highly troublesome surveillance efforts around the nation.

While the original grant request from the LAPD claimed they would be using the Stingray for “regional terrorism investigations,” they’ve been using it for everything from drug cases to burglary and murder cases.

“Of course, we’ve seen this pattern over and over and over,” the EFF points out. “The government uses ‘terrorism’ as a catalyst to gain some powerful new surveillance tool or ability, and then turns around and uses it on ordinary citizens, severely infringing on their civil liberties in the process.”

As previously mentioned, the biggest problem with Stingrays is the lack of a specific warrant issued for an individual, instead, it essentially gives police “general warrant” powers.

Blocking general warrant powers was exactly what the founding fathers had in mind when drafting the Fourth Amendment since, as the EFF rightly notes, “In pre-revolutionary America, British soldiers used ‘general warrants’ as authority to go house-to-house in a particular neighborhood, looking for whatever they please, without specifying an individual or place to be searched.”

Continue reading at:  http://endthelie.com/2013/02/12/legality-questioned-as-secretive-st...