From Stingrays to Dirt Boxes: Evolving Surveillance Techniques

By Jeralyn, Section Civil Liberties
Posted on Fri Nov 14, 2014 at 08:50:00 AM EST
Tags: sting rays, dirtboxes, electronic surveillance (all tags)

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Last week I wrote about deceptive law enforcement techniques, focusing on new details about law enforcement's use of stingray devices. The devices are small enough to fit in an undercover vehicle. The device creates a very strong but fake cell tower signal which causes phones nearby (perhaps in the whole neighborhood) to connect to it. When the phones connect, the device then captures a lot of personal information. This is particularly helpful to police when they suspect a certain person of say dealing drugs, and know where he is, but don't know his phone number, because he gets a new throw-away phone every few weeks. But it's problematic because the device is capturing the same personal information from all phones in the area. It's a dragnet.

Move over, stingrays. The Wall St Journal reports similar devices called "dirtboxes" are being used by agents on airplanes, allowing them to capture the data on thousands of cell phones during the course of a single flight. [More...]

The U.S. Marshals Service program, which became fully functional around 2007, operates Cessna aircraft from at least five metropolitan-area airports, with a flying range covering most of the U.S. population, according to people familiar with the program.

The same group getting the orders for stingrays get the order for the dirtboxes.

The program cuts out phone companies as an intermediary in searching for suspects. Rather than asking a company for cell-tower information to help locate a suspect, which law enforcement has criticized as slow and inaccurate, the government can now get that information itself. People familiar with the program say they do get court orders to search for phones, but it isn’t clear if those orders describe the methods used because the orders are sealed.

In addition to the privacy concerns of non-suspects whose information is captured by these devices, there is concern over the kind of order prosecutors seek to authorize the usage of these devices, and whether the orders provide direction as to how information captured from phones of non-suspects is to be treated. See my