June 10, 2022 • 60 mins
What are Stingrays and how are they used in surveillance? Jonathan brings in the guys from Stuff They Don't Want You To Know to find out.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio. And
how the tech are you? It is time for a
tech Stuff plastic episode. This episode is called a sting
(00:26):
ray operation and it has guest co hosts Ben Bolan
and Matt Frederick of stuff they don't want you to
know on the show. And that's because stingrays are a
type of surveillance tech used by law enforcement agencies that
trick your cell phone into thinking they're talking to an
actual cell phone tower. Let's listen in. We were super
(00:50):
excited to hear about today's topic because it's been something
that Matt and I have been talking about off air.
Is that correct? Absolutely? This kind of technology that we're
going to get into a little later. Uh piques our interest.
You could say, yeah, mine as well. Uh. You know,
the stuff they don't want you to know shows great show.
If you guys haven't checked it out, you need to
(01:11):
go and and check it out. Check check out how
you guys are looking into various types of conspiracies, things
that are happening below the surface level that people may
not be aware of and kind of sifting through the
information to show which parts of it are you know,
(01:34):
are really solid. You know, these are the things that
we know for sure. And here's the conjecture that's been
said about it. You guys do a great job with it.
And as it turns out, there's a lot of stuff
out there that can really fuel that kind of kind
of talk for good reason. And I typically am one
of those more you know, I am a little more
(01:54):
conservative and skeptical with my approach to these things. But
this is a technology we're gonna talk about today that
I don't know how you could go to it being
skeptical and say, oh, everything is fine. We are talking
about sting ray or I M. S I catchers, And
(02:14):
so sting ray is the one that I think most
people have heard about. That's the one that was brought
up in a lawsuit in Arizona, UM. So I think
that that is what most people think about when they
hear I M. S I catchers, if they are aware
of that term at all. But of course sting stingray
is just one version of that, and we'll talk about
(02:35):
some of the other ones as well. So I am
s I catchers stands for International Mobile subscriber identity catchers
or locators, and that is a fancy way of saying.
This is a technology that is able to intercept signals
from cell phones, ostensibly so that a law enforcement official
(03:01):
could locate a person based upon that person's cell phone signaling.
And it does this, and we'll talk about specifics in
a bit, by mimicking a cell phone tower. So in
other words, your cell phone is communicating with this device
thinking that this is the actual part of the infrastructure
(03:22):
that it would normally operate inside. Yeah. Yeah, it's sort
of the same way that are similar at least to
the ways in which some animals have evolved to have
camouflage that makes them appear to be a different type
of creature. Right. Yeah. And one thing that I just
want to get this out so I don't uh moan
and complain about it for the whole episode. If you
(03:44):
ever lost a cell phone or had one stolen and
had the sneaking suspicion that there might be a way
for law enforcement to catch it, well, theoretically there is.
It's just it's just they can't do that for everybody
because so many people lose their cell phones or have
them stolen, you know, as long as it's turned on right, right, Yeah,
(04:05):
and as long as well, And it also depends on
a couple of other things too, Right, they have to
have the if they're looking for your cell phones specifically,
they kind of need to know a little bit more information,
like they need to know something specific about that phone
or to identify it versus all the other phones that
will connect to it, right, because otherwise they just be like, well,
(04:27):
it maybe one of the phones here, and there are
different ways of looking into that. Right. It all depends
on what the investigation is and we'll we'll talk more
about how it's used in investigations. So basically, this is
a technology meant to help Again, ostensibly law enforcement tracked
down the bad guys or counter terrorism officials to identify
(04:49):
potential terrorist threats before they become a reality. That's what
it's supposed to be used for. There are a lot
of people who have objected to it because it is
it is take making a very wide approach to targeting
something very specific, and that can be dangerous for the
sting ray its self. A cost between sixty eight thousand
dollars and a hundred thirty five thousand dollars last I checked.
(05:13):
Because there are two different models of the sting ray.
There's the sting ray and sting Ray. To sting Ray
two came out a few years ago. The sting ray
obviously came out before that. Because we move in a
chronological order, they haven't gotten to that quantum effect where
the sequel comes out before the original. Um. Now it's
made by a company called Harris Corporation out of Melbourne, Florida,
(05:36):
and uh and this company makes a lot of technology
that falls into this general category. Some of the products
that they make are similar to sting ray and do
similar things to that device. Others are more specific and
are meant to be used in conjunction with gadget like stingray. Yeah. Yeah,
(05:58):
you know, it's like a console. Are like you've got
your connect, you've got your you know, your your dance pad,
You've got all these other things sort of the similar
thing here, except the devices that Harris Corporation makes. Some
of them boost the signal catching ability of the basic
technology like the stingray. Some of them allow for better
(06:21):
tracking technology. It all depends on the thing. But but
you know, you may have heard some of the other names.
Some of the other names that include trigger fish, kingfish,
amber jack, gossamer, harpoon, and hail storm. Uh. And not
only these are not types of stingray. These are all
(06:41):
individual devices that work in a similar way to sting ray.
Some of them copy the functionality of sting ray, some
of them go beyond that. In fact, trigger fish is
particularly troubling. Um. But sting ray it self can be
really troubled too if you just do a simple upgrade
to it. And then you're right. All of these have
(07:04):
things in common and that they all are meant to
detect cell phone usage in some way and either identify
it or locate it and or track it. Um. And
it's how you use these in combination with one another
that determines your ability to do that. Now, clearly we're
talking about something that's mimicking a cell phone tower. You
(07:25):
have to have it be mobile because otherwise you just
have to hope that the bad guys happened to go
across your part of town. You can't take it to
them if it's not mobile, right. So, Uh. One of
the things that this is really helpful for as far
as law enforcement are concerned, is that they can go
to a part of town where they suspect someone is.
(07:48):
They can put out their ears, listen for it, look
to see if they have any hits that relate back
to the target they're specifically looking for, and if not,
they can move on to a different part of town. Um.
That's also one of the drawbacks, as it turns out,
at least from from the perspective of some people. Now,
let's see one other thing. Oh, I forgot to mention.
(08:10):
Gossamer is one of the exceptions to this. Gossamer is
not about tracking or locating cell phone, but this is
the one that freaks me out the most. Yeah, this
is not passive. Now, Gossamer is about denial of service
attacks on a mobile phone, so it's about it's essentially
a jammer. No, this is great for all the paranoid
(08:31):
people in the audience. Are you getting bad reception or
are you being gossamer? I actually and another thing to
to mention. I didn't put it in our notes, but
one of the things these devices typically can do. The
stingray in particular can do this is it can boost
your the signal coming from your phone to connect to
(08:52):
the tower. It can essentially say I need a stronger
signal your phone. Then, even though you're not using it,
like it's just in your pocket, there's no vibrating, there's
no ringing, there's nothing going on, your phone starts sending
stronger signals. This drains your battery. So if you're the
paranoid persuasion, you may also think my phone's battery just
won't even last like a full day anymore. And it
(09:14):
might not be because your phone is old. It might
be because you're getting you're getting sting rayed. You guys,
I'm not kidding. This happening to me right now. Well,
I'm sorry that you should take more care when you
are browsing on your phone. Also, Matt, Matt, I mean
not to make you worried or anything, but you're definitely
on some lists. So I mean, you're on our list
(09:38):
of favorite people. But yeah, there's one right there. So okay,
So I love this idea about it being mobile. So
if we take that paranoid example, in the vast majority,
virtually every time somebody has poor reception or poor battery life,
it is never going to be something like this. But
there's a very small chance, yeah that if you are
(10:01):
a victim of this, you could literally have someone following
you around, right, Yeah, I mean, okay, to be fair,
this technology we're talking about is at a level of
expense where it's not likely to happen to you. And
if you are someone who is either hanging out with
questionable people or you yourself are engaged in some questionable activities,
(10:25):
then you'd be more likely to have this actually target you. Now,
because we know that law enforcement agencies across the United
States and in other parts of the world have used
this kind of technology, they're the they're the customers there
once they're purchasing the stuff from Harris Corporation, it's very
(10:45):
possible you would come into contact with this and it's
not that you are being targeted, but you're still being
affected because it's just so broad. Yeah, it's like it's
mimicking a cell phone tower. It's not mimicking a cell
phone tower for a single phone. It's mimicking a cellphone
tower for the broadcast range of that device. And so okay,
(11:06):
so their mobile but what what would they look like
if you just saw one? So they look kind of like, uh,
I mean, if you've ever seen one of those servers,
like it looks like just a basic computer with lots
of ports on it. It's kind of like that. It's
usually a little bit uh stumpy looking like it's not
as wide as your typical server is a little more
(11:27):
narrow a little tall, but it's meant to fit into
racks because you can, you know, end up pairing these
with other technologies. But it's essentially a computer and you
hook it up to a laptop, so you've got really
the basic parts you have are the antenna, which is
important because obviously it has to receive signals sent from
cell phones um and a transmitter so that you can
(11:47):
send stuff back through if you need to. You've got
the computer itself, which is processing the signals and identifying
where those signals are coming from, both what type of
phone it is by you know, giving you the identification
numbers of that phone, the phone number that's associated with
that phone, and the location of that phone based upon
(12:09):
some triangulation. You might actually have to physically move the
technology around to get the triangulation. You could theoretically communicate
with another cell phone tower and by getting comparing numbers,
you know, you know you can generally tell the direction
from which the signal comes and its strength that gives
(12:30):
you an idea of it's it's general location in that
like you know roughly what distance it is from your
your space station. So it's one of those things where
if the signal gets stronger, it's closer to you, right,
and if it's if it's if the signal, if the
cell phone signal is getting weaker, than you know that
the target cell phone is moving away. If you were
(12:51):
to move the van to a second location and do
those measurements, then because you have the two points on
a on one part of a triangle, the cell phones
the third point, then you know where the person is.
It's the same way that cell phone towers are able
to give an approximation of where you are, even if
your phone doesn't have GPS. Right, it's sending the signals
(13:12):
and based upon the strength of the signal, how long
it takes to get there, all of these sort of things,
it can approximate where you are now. By by approximate,
I mean within a few you know, meters, So it's
not like as as a specific as GPS can be,
but it's still good enough for law enforcement to hone
in on a on a particular location and people can
(13:35):
sent to the use of GPS. But yeah, so there's
a question that I'm sure a lot of people are wondering,
which is this stuff sounds kind of space a g
but how how new? Is it not that new? Uh?
The the information I found said that at least the
trigger fish version of this technology has been in use
(13:57):
since the late nineteen nineties. What uh. Yeah, And to
keep keep in mind, like this technology has been in
some form of development or another and been available to
different types of agencies, specifically the FBI would be a
big one. Um. And it's just that over the past
few years it has become more common for local law
(14:19):
enforcement to get their hands on this. Before it was
something that only you know, the federal law enforcement officials
were able to access. But now we're seeing local law enforcement.
Uh not everybody's owning up to it, but we're seeing
a lot of local law enforcement offices adopt this technology,
and they're doing it in kind of a kind of
(14:41):
a backdoor Shenanigan's way, I would say, yeah, we'll be
back with more of this classic episode of tech stuff
after this quick break. So, uh, you know, these things
can be pretty expensive, and obviously law enforcement has a
(15:04):
budget that they have to answer to. So some of
them are funding the purchase of this material by filing
it under counter terrorism uh um strategies. Yeah. Essentially they
say we want to participate in this, you know, we
want to make sure we help protect national security doing
it on a local level. Uh And then they get
(15:25):
the federal grant to purchase the stuff. But then they're
using it on a much broader scale. So it's not
like they're not using it specifically for a counter terrorism
they're using it in all sorts of cases. There was
a story about a sheriff whose own vehicle got broken
into and uh and whose phone was stolen, who decided
(15:47):
to use this stuff to try and ostensibly to try
and stop the the string of car break ins. Some
people would say that perhaps it was more personal than that,
but the point being that this was not a counter
terrorism issue. This was you know, someone breaking in and
entering into cars, which is you know, that's that's a crime.
(16:07):
But you people have been arguing, like, what at what
level of crime do you consider the use of this
particular type of technology necessary to employ? Yeah, especially given
the expense not just in financial terms but in terms
of manpower or time so that's that's one problem, but
it's my spider sense is telling me that you have
(16:30):
a bigger problem I've got. I've got so many problems
with this, So let's let's talk about how it works first,
because this is this is what leads into where the
biggest problems that I have where the technology come from. So, uh,
to understand how this works, you've got to know how
cell phone works, all right, And we're gonna be super
high level here because I could do a full episode
(16:51):
on how cell phones work and you guys would be
stabbing me because you're wondering why I pulled you in UM.
But typically the easiest way of explaining it as cell
phones broadcast over radio frequencies, and you have cell phone
towers that represent a broadcast area. The towers are able
to accept the incoming signals from a cell phone and
(17:13):
outgoing signals that are going to cell phones within that
UM service area. They're doing so over specific frequency to
the phones. Your phone knows which frequency quote unquote knows
which frequency to be in because there's a master control
system that's telling the phone tune into this frequency so
that you can receive and transmit information. Technically, you're using
(17:34):
two frequencies so you can receive and transmit at the
same time. Then as you leave one cell phone service
area and you're starting to get closer to another, then
you have to be handed off right because if if not,
once you move too far away from the base station,
you would no longer have service. So this is similar
to when you move into an area that doesn't have
(17:55):
the towers that support the service you use. So if
you're like an A T and T customer and you
go into an area that's not supported by A T
and T, then you're out of lock. Your phone becomes
a brick, right or whatever's on your phone, that's all
you can use. So you have to have this handoff
technology for one tower to hand off the the service
(18:17):
to another tower as you're moving between them. So what's
happening is your phone is constantly sending little signals even
when it's not directly in use to say here I
am It's essentially saying I'm here. Yeah, it's exactly like
paying a server. It's doing this about every seven to
fifteen seconds. So this is why even if you don't
(18:40):
use your phone, the battery life gradually decreases, so the
reason it does this is very important because if it
didn't tell the cell phone towers, hey here I am,
you would never get texts or cell phone or you
never get a call. You couldn't you just play solitaire
or whatever. Yeah, because because the sis stone wouldn't know
where your phone is, so it wouldn't be able to
(19:02):
send the signal like it doesn't when someone dials your number.
It doesn't magically right connect to your phone. The system
has to be aware of where you are and as
this constant game of Marco polo to ensure that there's
this seamless transition, right because you as a person, you
are mobile, so you can move from location to location.
You are not always going to be next to the
(19:24):
same cell phone tower all the time. So your phone
has to constantly, like every seven to fifteen seconds, say
I'm here. Because if you're in the car and you're
traveling down the road, you're moving in and out of
different you know, cell tower ranges. So the different cell
towers have to be aware of where your phone is
so that you can continue to receive messages, phone calls,
(19:46):
that kind of stuff, or make them. Yeah. But the
problem is that because of this technology, you know that
this is what makes cell phones useful, but because of
that same technology, it's also what makes this sting ray
technology possible. So, because your phone is sending out these
messages and your phone doesn't know where the next cell
phone tower is, it's broadcasting these little messages and the
(20:08):
cell phone towers pick it up. Based upon the signal strength,
the cell phone tower knows if you are moving toward
it or moving away from it. The sting ray ends
up mimicking the cell phone tower. So your little cell
phone sends out a message and the stingray picks it up.
Sting ray now knows where your phone is, or at
least knows that your phone is in that area. As
the signal gets stronger, the sting ray knows that your
(20:30):
phone is getting closer to it. If you have triangulated this,
then it knows where you are. Or if you have
one of the other devices that pair with the sting
ray that can help track and locate, the sting ray
knows where you are. There's a laptop that you would
connect to this device that would give you the redoubt
that would be useful for a human being, because right
now we're talking all about technology that and data that
(20:53):
machines could use, but it is not useful to us
because we wouldn't be able to see it. But the
laptop expresses that in ways that make it possible for
you to see. Maybe with mapping software. It's plotting the
location against a map, as well as identification of the
phone numbers UM and the I D number that's unique
(21:17):
to that particular mobile phone. So the issue here is
that this this sting ray, we'll accept all of those
incoming messages, all those things. Yeah, anything that's within the
area that that the sensitivity of that antenna, it will
pick that up. So is it like, is it just metadata?
(21:41):
Well yes, originally, first it's just, first of all, just metadata,
just metadata, because metadata you don't need very much of
it to start making some very scary conclusions. You can
start to really narrow down who person is based upon
(22:01):
some metaday, their routines, what they do in the real world,
and when they do it, the phone numbers they might
be in contact with at that time. The phone number
of the device itself obviously would be very important. So
let's say that you two YouTube and Ben you are
you are? You are the cops? Okay, you're in your
(22:22):
van the power. Yeah, I know, not go crazy. Do
we have a tank? You do not have a tank.
We're not We're not Swanny. Was Swanny? Wasn't it? I
was thinking I Swanny. By the way, listeners, is is
just to the northeast of Atlanta. It's a little part
of Metro Atlanta area. Um and they have a tank.
(22:45):
So anyway, you are in a van, you have heard
about tanks, but you do not currently own one. You've
got plenty of donuts to get you through the day.
By the way, if you were in law enforcement, and
I am offending you, dear listeners, I'm merely poking fun.
I love you guys at any rate. So you guys
are looking at the incoming messages that are being hittop.
(23:07):
You're looking specifically for a phone number associated with a suspect,
a person of interest. You want to be able to
track this person down, but so far have been unable
to do so. You have heard that this person may
in fact be in this particular part of town, which
is why you have parked your van, And all you
are doing is looking for a hit of that particular
(23:28):
number as it moves through. And once you do, you
then try to triangulate, you locate, and then your your
send people out there to talk to this suspect or
person of interest. Now that that alone, that sounds like
that's okay. I mean, there might be some problems we
have here, but you're specifically looking for the hit. You're
(23:50):
not looking at the massive amount of information that's coming in.
You're looking for something specific. Yeah, and now, Matt, I know,
I know that, dude, I know, I know. It's the
pencil pushers who really are to blame. Don't don't, don't
bust my chops um so at any rate, Yeah, in
(24:11):
this case, you are specifically looking for a particular phone number.
It's a little more tricky if you don't know the
number though, right Like now you're looking for patterns. Now
you're looking specifically for activities that match what you suspect
your target is already doing. You're also possibly looking to
(24:32):
find out what phone numbers are being used in an area. Now,
this is where it really gets tricky because some of
these devices, not all of them, but the sting ray
and the trigger fish included both can tell you if
someone makes a call from within that area that the
sting ray covers. You can see what number they called. Now, now,
(24:54):
at least with the basic sting ray, you can't listen
in on the call. You just know the time, the number,
and the duration of the call. Hold on. It sounds
like we're getting to a point where we can listen
to these calls basic sting ray. Yeah. Okay, So remember
when I said you can upgrade. So sting ray is
(25:16):
it's a computer, is what it boils down to. I mean,
it's more than a computer, but it has elements of
a computer. It runs software. There is software that you
can install on the sting ray that does allow you
to listen in. There is fish Hawk, which is software
that allows you to eavesdrop upon conversations. And there's also Porpoise.
(25:38):
You might have noticed a theme I was gonna ask about.
They're in Florida, that makes sense. But anyway, so the
porpoise allows you to uh see texts that are sent
through here. So it's again it's messages or phone calls
that are sent from the phone out through the the
(26:03):
sting ray that go on. Now, this obviously raises a
lot of very tricky questions, particularly when it comes to
basic rights, because if you are just taking in everything
and you can potentially read all the text messages or
listening on any of the conversations that are going through.
(26:24):
Then remember this is just based on geography. You know,
you're not targeting, you're getting everything. There's no probable cause,
there's no probable cause, there's no warrant. So back in
our scenario, Ben and I in our readout, well, okay,
I'm driving, so Ben, you're alright, so you're the wheelman,
get it so you can see. Then we'll be able
(26:44):
to see all of this on a readout. A Matt, look,
look at his number. It's been going back and forth
from these two cell phone towers every freaking Thursday. Yeah.
Or it could be Ben saying, hey, Matt, look this
duphus over here thinks his girlfriend's gonna may can dinner tonight,
and we already know she ain't gonna do that, right buddy,
(27:04):
You guys are so good at after this comes out,
it's so I'll just be stopped on the street. We've
got more to say in this classic episode of tech stuff.
After these quick messages, that's funny until it happened, alright,
(27:31):
So at any rate, uh yeah, yeah, I mean technically,
if you have the right technology right, being the the
appropriate one for this, uh, and you have the correct
software on it, then you could be you could start
filtering through you could potentially read anything that's coming through
that that stingray device. So again, it would be any
(27:53):
phone that was within that range of the antenna. Um
you wouldn't necessarily I mean you probably wouldn't be storing
at all. I mean you could if you had a
large enough hard drive. That would be another thing you
would need to have in your array of technology piling
up very quickly. Yeah, and so this is starting to
(28:14):
sound probably very similar to the discussions we've had about
the n s A. You know, the fact that they
have been collecting cell phone data at the they're doing
it at the provider level, right like they're there, they've
got their ears on this national or even global level,
whereas we're really talking about very regional effects here. Yes,
(28:39):
still very concerning. So how much how much information can
it actually capture? Um, well, you know it's here all right.
Here's the thing. We don't know the full extent of
what I can capture because secrets have to be kept
for your safety from the creators of sting ray or
(29:00):
from the police departments. In the law enforcement. I'm just
gonna say yes from both. So there was a story recently.
I think it was I want to say it was
Santa Clara, California, but I could be wrong. It was
a It was a town in California, however, that recently
declined to purchase from Harris Corporation because they said there
(29:22):
were agreements that they would have been forced to enter
into that would prevent them from releasing any information about
the product, even in the face of a Freedom of
Information Act request. So an iron clad in yes, like
a nondisclosure agreement to trump all nondisclosure. How the heck
(29:43):
do you get aroun A. You mostly just drag your
heels as long as possible and hope that the judge
that ends up hearing any case about it is not
savvy enough to understand the implications of this technology. You
can appeal for national security, I think right. That's essentially
what they say is that if we were to tell
you what the capabilities of this technology were, then the
(30:07):
bad guys would be able to work around it, thus
making the technology useless and we'd only be getting your
boring text messages instead of the bad guys stuff. Well,
it's okay just to play the advocate here that kind
of reasoning, which is incredibly slippery and dangerous. It does
make sense if you think again about the ostensible purpose, right,
(30:29):
the the idea that this stuff could be rendered useless
if it wasn't a secret. But also, I'm just gonna
say the word I'm going to say is convenient. It's
a convenient reason well, and it's it's yeah, when you
have like a rubber stamp that's a secret, then how
do you have oversight? How can you make certain that
the figures that have been put into authority positions in
(30:53):
order to help the citizens, how can you make sure
that they are doing that that do that they've been
they've been tasked with, as opposed to abusing it or
misusing it, maybe not even abusing it on purpose, but
perhaps through you know, no no maliciousness, have been using
(31:14):
it incorrectly. Uh. And there have been arguments that judges
have allowed this kind of technology to be used because
the explanations they were given about what the technology did
were purposefully vague and limited, so that they would not
know the full extent of what this technology does. So,
(31:36):
in other words, here's where we're going to kind of
transition into more of the policy stuff, because you know,
that's really why I got you guys to come on here.
The technology we've kind of covered, you know, the very
basic ideas that he's a man in the middle kind
of attack. The reason why I brought you on here
is because this is my own personal perspective, my own opinion.
(31:58):
But my opinion is at this technology is dangerously close,
if not identical, to the concept of issuing a general warrant,
which is precisely what the Fourth Amendment was supposed to
protect us from. So the idea being that here in
the United States, by the way, this technology is being
used in other places. In fact, one of the reasons
(32:20):
that I brought up is because recently Sky News was
reporting about how it's being used in the UK. Uh.
It had been thought to have been used in the
UK for a while, but now there's kind of essentially
ironclad evidence that yes, it's being used as the UK. Yeah.
So the reason why, uh, you know, I brought you
guys in is this this idea of one of the
(32:42):
founding principles of the United States of America was that
the colonists didn't they weren't so crazy about the British
coming up and going into every single house looking for
a specific person, with no reason to suspect that the
person of ed was actually in the houses they were stopping.
It's just a general blanket search, right, So search and seizure.
(33:06):
The idea of being that we're looking for this person.
This person is is bad and so you have no
rights until we find this person. So we're gonna go
into your house and turn it upside down looking for
this person. If they're not there, too, well, okay, well
good for you, too bad for us. We're gonna go
do it to the next family. Ah. So, this approach
(33:28):
of using a device to pull in all incoming data,
even if you're looking for a really bad person, you're
getting everything, and it doesn't seem that different to me
than the approach of there's this bad person out there,
we're going to go through everybody's house until we find
that person. So for me, there are a couple of
things you have to establish. One of them is does
(33:51):
that data that you're sending out belong to you? Is
it really yours or you know, is it the companies
that you're using just to ostensibly send the information to
a cell tower to another person. Um, and then for me,
if you look at things like when the Boston bombing occurred,
and then the search for the Sarnative brothers afterwards, and
(34:11):
when the police were going through and essentially doing what
you're saying, searching through houses. Yeah, with just it's not
really a general warrant, but something kind of similar to that,
where yeah, I mean they didn't have all they didn't
have a warrant for each specific house they went through,
which they're supposed to if if I mean, your rights
(34:31):
as a citizen are supposed to say, listen, if you
don't have a warrant, you cannot come into my house.
That is a constitutional right guaranteed to me. Yeah, it's
the old, the old ticking time bomb reasoning, which I
find fairly disingenuous. Uh. When the idea we heard it before,
with the idea of using torture to obtain some sort
(34:53):
of confession or insider information, where people would say, well,
torture is not ordinarily allowed, but if there is a
bomb that is going to go off in a set
amount of time, and we have one person who knows
the information in custody, then shouldn't we torture somebody to
save a hundred people or whatever the number is. And
this with what's similar to me about this is that
(35:15):
this encounters um so many ways to bend rules that
are that exists for a reason, as you said, and
it doesn't really provide a way to bend those rules
back to their original shape. I mean, Jonathan, I can
think of already, uh several scenarios wherein this gig gets
(35:36):
sticky very quickly. Matt. I love that you mentioned, Uh.
It might not be the person actually using the phone, right,
It might be someone else, uh took a phone right
and used it as a burner. But the person, the
innocent person whose name is uh tied to that number
that I d they're going to be automatically suspect number
(35:57):
one or maybe even public enemy number one. Another question
is what if? What if? This search? Right? So let's
go back in, Um, Matt, you and I are still cops, Jonathan,
your FBI, your special investigator. All right, you came in,
you said, I'm taking over this investigation. I got a
little flip phone because I'm from the later seasons of
X Files, right exactly right, black two, black tie, whole thing.
(36:20):
And you say that we are looking for you know,
insert bad guy's name here. Uh. And while we're looking though, however, uh,
there are our search our vacuum cleaner approach brings in
another number that pings on your radar because you were
(36:41):
already suspicious of one person doing, you know, a federal
level crime. So this person who we were not looking for,
just showed up. What happens then, Uh? Well, I mean,
obviously I gotta take over the investigation. I've seen a
lot of episodes of various crime dramas, and that's what
the That's the only thing the FBI is around to
(37:02):
do is to push the local police force out of
this was my case. That's the way you have to
keep putting your sunglasses on and taking the Occasionally you
just hear the who yeah, yeah, Well I've got a
scenario kind of like that. Unlessing, Jonathan, do you want
to do? Answer no, No, I did. The only answer
to that that I have is that I would imagine
(37:25):
that at least until there are some strong precedents set
in in court about the actual use of this technology,
what it really can do, and whether or not it
truly is constitutional to use it in the way that
it's being used. I would imagine at least until that happens,
(37:46):
the FBI acts on that act on that information, because
if there if no one has come out and said
you can't do that, they're going to do that. And
I don't mean to cast aspersions on lawn enforcement of
the FBI. I realized that they have incredibly difficult and
very high stakes jobs, right and in order for them
(38:10):
to be able to do those jobs in an increasingly
complex technological world, there are some very tough questions we
have to answer. But the problem I have is that
these are questions that that seem to already have been
answered in the past. We just haven't applied the answer yet,
or people judges in particular, haven't understood the implications of
(38:31):
this technology, and that we're seeing some civil liberties fade
away as a result or get less, you know, like
like it's like you are protected against this except in
all of these other newer situations, many of which we
cannot legally tell you about because national security, right, because
(38:52):
if we told you about how we're violating your civil liberties,
then the bad guys would win. Like, well, technically, if
you're telling me that my civil liberties are being violated,
but you can't tell me how the bad guys have one. Yeah,
it's it's an interesting deliminate is one that we keep
running into. And this is not the first time. I
love that you mentioned there's precedent through about this throughout history.
(39:12):
I mean back when it was just the post office, right. Uh,
there were there were still these ongoing debates about what
kind of right to privacy should someone expect when they're
using the postal system. But you also mentioned advocacy groups,
So is there some organized opposition to there's quite quite
a lot. There's a lot of disorganized opposition too. But
(39:34):
the organized opposition includes like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the
e F E f UH, there's the American Civil Liberties Union,
the a c l u UH, there's EPIC. There are
all these different groups that are all about privacy and
civil rights that have identified problem areas with US technologies,
(39:54):
some of which have been they've kind of some of
them have couched their arguments, largely because they ay, we
can't come out and say how strongly strongly we feel
about this because of the secrecy involved. Without knowing everything,
we we don't want to suspect the worst. But we
can't discount it either because you won't tell us what
(40:17):
it does or how it's being used. Um, you know,
but there are a lot who are saying you need
to have rules set in place on how this technology
can be used, if in fact it is legal to
use it at all. So, for example, perhaps before you
use this you have to secure a warrant that specifies
(40:38):
who you are looking for and and narrows that down
to a point where you can't just throw out a
net and everybody who's caught in the net, their lives
are turned upside down for the duration of you sorting
out which person is the one you actually are interested in.
But they'll never know the collateral damage isn't really collateral
(40:58):
if they have no idea, Well, they might not ever know.
And you know, you could argue that in a world
where you never know that this is happening and it's
never affecting you, stick with me. You're in a world
where you you don't know that's happening to you and
it's not having any noticeable effect on your life. Ultimately,
(41:20):
you might be able to go to sleep at night
and think, well, it doesn't really matter, because if it
is not affecting my life. Then I mean, I don't
want it to happen, and I'm still going to protest
it happening because I don't think it's right. But if
it doesn't have a noticeable effect on my life at
the end of the day, when I draw my last breath,
it hasn't really made a difference, who cares. But we
(41:41):
might also live in a world where sometimes it does
affect us, even if we are perfectly innocent in all
in the eyes of the law. Let's just throw out
some examples of the n S saver, for instance, like
a person who decides to use the n S as
wide array of of surveillance techniques to look in on
an ex girlfriend. That's exactly the scenario I was going
(42:02):
to bring up. If you and I back in our scenario,
I decided to go back and use the machine for
a little bit because we parked to get some coffee
or something, and I see a number that I recognize
pop up, and I'm just like, oh, what is my
ex wife's new husband talking about? Oh, and then blah
blah blah blah blah. There you go down the rabbit
hole into weird personal things. Then, and this is the thing.
(42:26):
It's it's you know, the technology allows that to happen,
and humans being human are going to do it right.
Like it's it's not a question of whether the technology
itself is good or bad because it's a tool. Uh,
you might say, is it a tool that is appropriate?
Is there any is there are there appropriate use cases
(42:48):
for this tool? And if so, how are they defined?
I think that's the important step. We have to come
to the conclusion of does this tool make sense? If so,
in which context does it make sense? And how can
we be certain that in any given use case it
fits those contexts? And if if we can answer all
(43:09):
those to our satisfaction, fine, I question whether that's possible
particular technology. But but the problem is that people they'll
behave outside of that, right. I mean, if there is
the capability of someone to do this, you know, use
this technology in a selfish, possibly harmful way, for then
(43:30):
someone will do it. It's not a question of if.
It's a question of when and how frequently and uh,
because we've seen it with the n s A. It's again,
you know, you have to remember that at the end
of the day, they're real human beings in charge of
using this technology, and real human beings have real motivations
that happen every single day of their lives. Just like
(43:53):
you and me. We we go through our lives and
we realize, oh, man, if only I knew what was
going on in that person's head. Oh wait, I could
figure it out because I've got access to this technology.
It happens, right, it does. One thing immediately that we
could say that might be a glimmer of hope with
(44:14):
this is that many of the surveillance technologies or proprietary
systems rather do have strict usage logs where wherein you know,
any user with an I D dis tract. So, uh,
Lieutenant Frederick would be pinned up for they would say, hey, lieutenant,
why were you running by the way? Uh? Private in
(44:39):
the police force, have you militarized the entire police force? Yes,
several years in the future. He's not a rookie, he's
a private all right. Well, anyhow, whatever your position would be,
you know, there would be somebody over you, ideally who
would say, hey, we noticed that you were searching this
number which is not part of it, and you went
(44:59):
pretty into So so that's one thing, But then again
it relies as you said, on the policy on the system.
I'd like to take the danger even further because one
of the most dangerous potential things about the n s
A program and possibly Stingray and it's other accoutrement, is
the idea that this could be used by corrupt people
(45:20):
with access to the technology to do things like smear campaigns,
to do blackmail, or even extortion. And the most frightening
thing to me, although it is it is offensive, the
idea that an innocent person's uh terrible late night you
up text messages might be collected and saved for posterity,
(45:42):
it's more frightening that this could be used to curtail
people who were fighting against it. Yeah, I mean there's
there's that possibilities. Well, I mean, grant this would a
lot of that responsibility falls on the Harris Car operation
and how they deal with the orders. I imagine that
(46:04):
they mostly I mean before they were really working with
the FBI and some military companies or military organizations I
should say, um, And it was only relatively recently, in
the last maybe five to ten years, that they started
really working with the local law enforcement agencies. UM. I
(46:30):
don't know what there are other customers are like or
who they are, but you could presumably, I mean, even
if even if it's not made by Harris Corporation, because
it's out there and because people know about it, then
that's enough for someone to say, hey, let's pour some
money into making one of these of our own so
we can spy on people in the CIA, or the
(46:55):
CIA might say let's use this so we can spy
on people in other countries. I mean, it's definitely a difficult,
difficult subject. It's tricky, uh, I mean, obviously, spying throughout
history has all been about let's find out what they
know without letting them know we know. So at some
(47:16):
point you're like, well, if we if we assume that
the premise that spies are necessary is true, then these
other technologies need to exist for us to be able
to do that. Yeah, but maybe you will, maybe you
would argue that spying is not something that should happen
in the first place. Okay, this this is something that
I know we really wanted your opinion. Okay for a while,
so have we? And we asked Alex Winter the same question.
(47:40):
He's a filmmaker made the deep webs. Have we reached
the point of new return with technology? Has technology rendered
the concept of individual privacy obsolete or will it do so? Okay,
well this is super complicated, right, Sorry, it's a great question.
(48:01):
Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of this text stuff
classic episode right after we take this break. On the
one hand, you have stuff like this, the technology specifically
meant to intercept and perhaps even uh not just not
(48:22):
just intercept in the sense of finding out who is
talking to whom, but what they are saying. Right, You've
got that technology, that's one thing, And you could argue
that as long as that technology exists, then privacy might
only be an illusion. It might be something you believe
you have, but in reality, your information is being collected somewhere.
(48:43):
And of course we know that anything we post or
call or text through or whatever, it's going through an infrastructure.
So there is at least one entity out there that
has the access to it. The question is whether anyone
is looking at it or if it's just if it's
just a conduit. Right, So you could argue that privacy
is just an illusion in that case. There's another argument
(49:04):
to make that has nothing to do with surveillance. Facebook. Twitter,
we are we are voluntarily sharing more and more of
our lives. Instagram, Pinterest, really anything you can think of
where you are allowed a platform people are taking advantage
of it. YouTube another great example, periscope. So you're you're
(49:31):
volunteering to share a lot more information and you don't
necessarily think while you're doing it. This could potentially put
other things in my life at risk of becoming public knowledge,
whether it's because you're not paying enough attention or you
just don't realize how much information you are revealing every
time you post something. Um So, you could argue in
(49:55):
that case, privacy might also be an illusion, not because
there are all these ways of staring at what's really
going on, but because we're actually giving everything away and
we're just not aware of it. We're not aware of
the consequences of what we our own actions happened to
be um I would argue we haven't gone too far
(50:18):
in the sense that we could, if motivated to do
so and given the authority to do so, reverse a
lot of the things that have been happening. The question
of whether that's a reality or not, I mean, that's
kind of like the pie in the sky optimistic idealism,
the idea that people could actually be motivated to take action,
(50:42):
specifically through voting and through campaigning, and through bringing things
to attention and getting the word out there and getting
people behind the argument, Hey, we need to address this,
and we need to have it addressed to our satisfaction,
not just it's secret. You can't know. I think it's possible,
(51:02):
I think it would be really hard, and I don't
even though I think it's possible, I don't think it's
the plausible outcome. If I'm being perfectly honest, Um, it
would require enormous changes in momentum among vast, huge entities
out there that are bigger than any one person is.
(51:22):
So even if you let's say that you have an
ideal candidate for president of the United States in mind,
someone that you truly believe has the best interests of
the citizens at heart and wants to protect constitutional rights,
so they want to do right by the citizens and
make sure that the things they do truly do protect
them and do so in a way that follows the rules.
(51:44):
Even if that person exists and has put into the
position of president, you still have everything outs that it,
like from the local level to n essay too. You know,
organizations that do not directly answer to the president. It's
not like the president is capable of changing everything by
(52:05):
flicking a wand in fact, they're not supposed to be
able to do that. Doesn't have the position to president us. Yeah. So, uh,
this is why until I become benevolent dictator, we're going
to have these problems. Yeah, you know, you've you've been
saying that more and more often. I I appreciate the
posters that you've put up around the office. Uh they're
(52:28):
they're a little bit stark. I don't know, I you know,
I think they might be a bit too Soviet. Yeah,
I mean, it would help if they were in English.
But there's a lot of like crush this thing beneath
the boot. I just like the fist looked really like empowering.
And now I oh it does man, it do? Yeah,
(52:50):
it does. You're both on the list now, alright, so
any rate, No, but this is this was the reason
why why did you guys on here is because as
I know you guys, I assume you feel similarly to
to what I've stated. But I mean, if there's if
I have in any way misconstrued, I would I definitely
(53:11):
want you to have the opportunity to address it, well,
I will let Ben finish this idea that I'm going
to start. But when we spoke with Mr. Winter, he
had a surprisingly positive outlook privacy. That's wonderful he did
the people that he's been speaking with and communicating with
in his research on the subject of the deep web.
He's finding that there are a lot of people who
(53:33):
are freely focused on encrypting data and finding ways to
encrypt almost all communication that is done from a private
person's level, so that a company that is even handling
your data won't be able to decrypt it. Right. So,
in other words, the the the company that handles it,
it literally is just the conduit. It cannot it cannot
(53:56):
see the content and most it will see where it's
coming from and where it's going, but beyond that not
what the actual information is. He used the phrase. One
phrase I remember that he used was a renaissance of privacy,
which which I found inspiring because the the old argument
of well, if you have nothing to worry about, what
(54:17):
you're worried about hiding, right, it's kind of silly when
you consider that we do live in a world now
where let's say, Jonathan, let's say that you as an
FBI agent, love the part of towner and so much.
You said, you know what, guys, I'm gonna pull up
my tent stakes from Langley and I'm gonna come down here,
and I am gonna I'm gonna live here, and a
(54:39):
matter of fact, I'm gonna run for city commissioner because
I think, uh, this kind of stuff needs to be
dealt with in a public eye. And then all of
a sudden, all of this stuff, every time you had
used your phone in that region got leaked by somebody.
Or maybe you're running for sheriff, right, because we do
know that the sheriff's uh, at least in the Cab
(55:00):
County once played to corrupt the game here. Yeah, well,
or or even just something that, like, you know, a
mistake that you make at some point, and it may
be it may be one that you you know, it
could be that something you consciously did, or not even
a conscious mistake, something that due to your actions has
(55:21):
accidentally happened, and that you have already taken care of it,
You have fixed whatever problems there are, whatever the nature
of that thing is, you have you know, you've done
your time. However that I'm that might be for something
like that to like, let's say that you do want
to run for a local, local position and it has
no bearing whatsoever on your ability to carry out your duties.
(55:44):
We live in a world now where that stuff comes back,
I mean, like big time comes back. And none of
us are saints. You know, no one, No one has
gone through life completely unsullied. Even if you, you know,
are have the best of intentions. Something has happened at
some point in your life. Maybe you were just in
the wrong place at the wrong time, but that can
(56:05):
be bad enough. Yeah, that's true. I I do want
to say, Um, I really enjoyed I always enjoy being
on the show, And um, I don't want to speak
for you, mat but I'm I'm grateful that hates it. Yeah,
I'm grateful that we got it horrible for me. You guys,
you would be so impressed by vast ability to silently weep.
(56:25):
We sit in this room, salty salty beard. But the
only thing I would add to what we were saying
is that I love that we were talking about how
we are not casting aspersion on the individuals working in
law enforcement, which is so often an incredibly thankless job,
a fatally at times thankless job. And when you're when
(56:47):
you are representing the good guys, right, the force of
the force of crime prevention in our society, then the
thing is that the game you are playing is stacked
against you because the bad guys, whomever they may be,
do not have to follow the same rules. So I
(57:07):
while I think that, while I think that it's often easy,
at least in our fuel, for people to demonize law
enforcement as a faithless entity rather than a group of
human beings, I do completely believe that this is horrible technology.
I don't see a lot of cases of it being successful.
(57:32):
The a c l U has tried their best to
make a map of all the police areas they're using this,
but they still they had to say that this map
is incomplete. This is, I believe, very very close to
a kind of Pandora's box. Because as we know, the
price of technology continually decreases. Right, So what happens when
(57:52):
it's a steam gray as the price of a PS four, Well,
I mean you know it's it's being made in such
limited amounts. I mean you have to have the demand there,
and you have to have I would imagine there will
also be laws that will limit the use of this
because you have the giant phone companies that will lobby
very hard. They don't want the ability for someone to
(58:12):
spoof a cell phone tower to fall into the hands
of an average citizen. Their their business depends upon that
not happening. You're not the average citizen. No, No, I'm
the future benevolent dictator of the new World Order. I
think you need a tank the I think you don't
need a tank on speed pial. Yeah, yeah, but they yeah,
(58:36):
this is this is fantastic and I really appreciate the
opportunity to let more people know about this. Yeah, And
like I said, this technology has been around for a while.
In fact that the stingray stuff really started hitting headlines
a couple of years ago, back in that's when I
was really starting to get noticed and keep in mind,
and then use more than a decade before that. So
(58:57):
it's it's good to be aware of it. It's good
to ask these questions. And like I said, we may
at some point come to a point where we are
able to answer the questions I've been asking, to a
point where maybe I would be like, Okay, I understand
that in the world we live in the reality of
the world we live in that under these situations, this
might be an acceptable use of the technology. Uh, it's
(59:20):
just right now we haven't. We don't have those answers
because of secrecy. So yeah, it's it's it's definitely something
to be aware of. H I. I don't want to
be a fearmonger or anything like that, but um, it
is important that you know about it because I mean,
it's it's out there. Whether you know or not, it
is there, so it's better to know. All right, Well, guys,
(59:43):
thank you so much for joining the show. Obviously you
can find Matt and Ben's work at Stuff. They don't
want you to know. Well, I hope you feels weird
to say this. Enjoyed that classic episode about law enforcement
surveillance always a tricky thing to talk about. And if
(01:00:05):
you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future
episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out to me. The
best way to do so is on Twitter. The handle
for the show is text Stuff H s W and
I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is
(01:00:25):
an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio. And
how the tech are you? It is time for a
tech Stuff plastic episode. This episode is called a sting
(00:26):
ray operation and it has guest co hosts Ben Bolan
and Matt Frederick of stuff they don't want you to
know on the show. And that's because stingrays are a
type of surveillance tech used by law enforcement agencies that
trick your cell phone into thinking they're talking to an
actual cell phone tower. Let's listen in. We were super
(00:50):
excited to hear about today's topic because it's been something
that Matt and I have been talking about off air.
Is that correct? Absolutely? This kind of technology that we're
going to get into a little later. Uh piques our interest.
You could say, yeah, mine as well. Uh. You know,
the stuff they don't want you to know shows great show.
If you guys haven't checked it out, you need to
(01:11):
go and and check it out. Check check out how
you guys are looking into various types of conspiracies, things
that are happening below the surface level that people may
not be aware of and kind of sifting through the
information to show which parts of it are you know,
(01:34):
are really solid. You know, these are the things that
we know for sure. And here's the conjecture that's been
said about it. You guys do a great job with it.
And as it turns out, there's a lot of stuff
out there that can really fuel that kind of kind
of talk for good reason. And I typically am one
of those more you know, I am a little more
(01:54):
conservative and skeptical with my approach to these things. But
this is a technology we're gonna talk about today that
I don't know how you could go to it being
skeptical and say, oh, everything is fine. We are talking
about sting ray or I M. S I catchers, And
(02:14):
so sting ray is the one that I think most
people have heard about. That's the one that was brought
up in a lawsuit in Arizona, UM. So I think
that that is what most people think about when they
hear I M. S I catchers, if they are aware
of that term at all. But of course sting stingray
is just one version of that, and we'll talk about
(02:35):
some of the other ones as well. So I am
s I catchers stands for International Mobile subscriber identity catchers
or locators, and that is a fancy way of saying.
This is a technology that is able to intercept signals
from cell phones, ostensibly so that a law enforcement official
(03:01):
could locate a person based upon that person's cell phone signaling.
And it does this, and we'll talk about specifics in
a bit, by mimicking a cell phone tower. So in
other words, your cell phone is communicating with this device
thinking that this is the actual part of the infrastructure
(03:22):
that it would normally operate inside. Yeah. Yeah, it's sort
of the same way that are similar at least to
the ways in which some animals have evolved to have
camouflage that makes them appear to be a different type
of creature. Right. Yeah. And one thing that I just
want to get this out so I don't uh moan
and complain about it for the whole episode. If you
(03:44):
ever lost a cell phone or had one stolen and
had the sneaking suspicion that there might be a way
for law enforcement to catch it, well, theoretically there is.
It's just it's just they can't do that for everybody
because so many people lose their cell phones or have
them stolen, you know, as long as it's turned on right, right, Yeah,
(04:05):
and as long as well, And it also depends on
a couple of other things too, Right, they have to
have the if they're looking for your cell phones specifically,
they kind of need to know a little bit more information,
like they need to know something specific about that phone
or to identify it versus all the other phones that
will connect to it, right, because otherwise they just be like, well,
(04:27):
it maybe one of the phones here, and there are
different ways of looking into that. Right. It all depends
on what the investigation is and we'll we'll talk more
about how it's used in investigations. So basically, this is
a technology meant to help Again, ostensibly law enforcement tracked
down the bad guys or counter terrorism officials to identify
(04:49):
potential terrorist threats before they become a reality. That's what
it's supposed to be used for. There are a lot
of people who have objected to it because it is
it is take making a very wide approach to targeting
something very specific, and that can be dangerous for the
sting ray its self. A cost between sixty eight thousand
dollars and a hundred thirty five thousand dollars last I checked.
(05:13):
Because there are two different models of the sting ray.
There's the sting ray and sting Ray. To sting Ray
two came out a few years ago. The sting ray
obviously came out before that. Because we move in a
chronological order, they haven't gotten to that quantum effect where
the sequel comes out before the original. Um. Now it's
made by a company called Harris Corporation out of Melbourne, Florida,
(05:36):
and uh and this company makes a lot of technology
that falls into this general category. Some of the products
that they make are similar to sting ray and do
similar things to that device. Others are more specific and
are meant to be used in conjunction with gadget like stingray. Yeah. Yeah,
(05:58):
you know, it's like a console. Are like you've got
your connect, you've got your you know, your your dance pad,
You've got all these other things sort of the similar
thing here, except the devices that Harris Corporation makes. Some
of them boost the signal catching ability of the basic
technology like the stingray. Some of them allow for better
(06:21):
tracking technology. It all depends on the thing. But but
you know, you may have heard some of the other names.
Some of the other names that include trigger fish, kingfish,
amber jack, gossamer, harpoon, and hail storm. Uh. And not
only these are not types of stingray. These are all
(06:41):
individual devices that work in a similar way to sting ray.
Some of them copy the functionality of sting ray, some
of them go beyond that. In fact, trigger fish is
particularly troubling. Um. But sting ray it self can be
really troubled too if you just do a simple upgrade
to it. And then you're right. All of these have
(07:04):
things in common and that they all are meant to
detect cell phone usage in some way and either identify
it or locate it and or track it. Um. And
it's how you use these in combination with one another
that determines your ability to do that. Now, clearly we're
talking about something that's mimicking a cell phone tower. You
(07:25):
have to have it be mobile because otherwise you just
have to hope that the bad guys happened to go
across your part of town. You can't take it to
them if it's not mobile, right. So, Uh. One of
the things that this is really helpful for as far
as law enforcement are concerned, is that they can go
to a part of town where they suspect someone is.
(07:48):
They can put out their ears, listen for it, look
to see if they have any hits that relate back
to the target they're specifically looking for, and if not,
they can move on to a different part of town. Um.
That's also one of the drawbacks, as it turns out,
at least from from the perspective of some people. Now,
let's see one other thing. Oh, I forgot to mention.
(08:10):
Gossamer is one of the exceptions to this. Gossamer is
not about tracking or locating cell phone, but this is
the one that freaks me out the most. Yeah, this
is not passive. Now, Gossamer is about denial of service
attacks on a mobile phone, so it's about it's essentially
a jammer. No, this is great for all the paranoid
(08:31):
people in the audience. Are you getting bad reception or
are you being gossamer? I actually and another thing to
to mention. I didn't put it in our notes, but
one of the things these devices typically can do. The
stingray in particular can do this is it can boost
your the signal coming from your phone to connect to
(08:52):
the tower. It can essentially say I need a stronger
signal your phone. Then, even though you're not using it,
like it's just in your pocket, there's no vibrating, there's
no ringing, there's nothing going on, your phone starts sending
stronger signals. This drains your battery. So if you're the
paranoid persuasion, you may also think my phone's battery just
won't even last like a full day anymore. And it
(09:14):
might not be because your phone is old. It might
be because you're getting you're getting sting rayed. You guys,
I'm not kidding. This happening to me right now. Well,
I'm sorry that you should take more care when you
are browsing on your phone. Also, Matt, Matt, I mean
not to make you worried or anything, but you're definitely
on some lists. So I mean, you're on our list
(09:38):
of favorite people. But yeah, there's one right there. So okay,
So I love this idea about it being mobile. So
if we take that paranoid example, in the vast majority,
virtually every time somebody has poor reception or poor battery life,
it is never going to be something like this. But
there's a very small chance, yeah that if you are
(10:01):
a victim of this, you could literally have someone following
you around, right, Yeah, I mean, okay, to be fair,
this technology we're talking about is at a level of
expense where it's not likely to happen to you. And
if you are someone who is either hanging out with
questionable people or you yourself are engaged in some questionable activities,
(10:25):
then you'd be more likely to have this actually target you. Now,
because we know that law enforcement agencies across the United
States and in other parts of the world have used
this kind of technology, they're the they're the customers there
once they're purchasing the stuff from Harris Corporation, it's very
(10:45):
possible you would come into contact with this and it's
not that you are being targeted, but you're still being
affected because it's just so broad. Yeah, it's like it's
mimicking a cell phone tower. It's not mimicking a cell
phone tower for a single phone. It's mimicking a cellphone
tower for the broadcast range of that device. And so okay,
(11:06):
so their mobile but what what would they look like
if you just saw one? So they look kind of like, uh,
I mean, if you've ever seen one of those servers,
like it looks like just a basic computer with lots
of ports on it. It's kind of like that. It's
usually a little bit uh stumpy looking like it's not
as wide as your typical server is a little more
(11:27):
narrow a little tall, but it's meant to fit into
racks because you can, you know, end up pairing these
with other technologies. But it's essentially a computer and you
hook it up to a laptop, so you've got really
the basic parts you have are the antenna, which is
important because obviously it has to receive signals sent from
cell phones um and a transmitter so that you can
(11:47):
send stuff back through if you need to. You've got
the computer itself, which is processing the signals and identifying
where those signals are coming from, both what type of
phone it is by you know, giving you the identification
numbers of that phone, the phone number that's associated with
that phone, and the location of that phone based upon
(12:09):
some triangulation. You might actually have to physically move the
technology around to get the triangulation. You could theoretically communicate
with another cell phone tower and by getting comparing numbers,
you know, you know you can generally tell the direction
from which the signal comes and its strength that gives
(12:30):
you an idea of it's it's general location in that
like you know roughly what distance it is from your
your space station. So it's one of those things where
if the signal gets stronger, it's closer to you, right,
and if it's if it's if the signal, if the
cell phone signal is getting weaker, than you know that
the target cell phone is moving away. If you were
(12:51):
to move the van to a second location and do
those measurements, then because you have the two points on
a on one part of a triangle, the cell phones
the third point, then you know where the person is.
It's the same way that cell phone towers are able
to give an approximation of where you are, even if
your phone doesn't have GPS. Right, it's sending the signals
(13:12):
and based upon the strength of the signal, how long
it takes to get there, all of these sort of things,
it can approximate where you are now. By by approximate,
I mean within a few you know, meters, So it's
not like as as a specific as GPS can be,
but it's still good enough for law enforcement to hone
in on a on a particular location and people can
(13:35):
sent to the use of GPS. But yeah, so there's
a question that I'm sure a lot of people are wondering,
which is this stuff sounds kind of space a g
but how how new? Is it not that new? Uh?
The the information I found said that at least the
trigger fish version of this technology has been in use
(13:57):
since the late nineteen nineties. What uh. Yeah, And to
keep keep in mind, like this technology has been in
some form of development or another and been available to
different types of agencies, specifically the FBI would be a
big one. Um. And it's just that over the past
few years it has become more common for local law
(14:19):
enforcement to get their hands on this. Before it was
something that only you know, the federal law enforcement officials
were able to access. But now we're seeing local law enforcement.
Uh not everybody's owning up to it, but we're seeing
a lot of local law enforcement offices adopt this technology,
and they're doing it in kind of a kind of
(14:41):
a backdoor Shenanigan's way, I would say, yeah, we'll be
back with more of this classic episode of tech stuff
after this quick break. So, uh, you know, these things
can be pretty expensive, and obviously law enforcement has a
(15:04):
budget that they have to answer to. So some of
them are funding the purchase of this material by filing
it under counter terrorism uh um strategies. Yeah. Essentially they
say we want to participate in this, you know, we
want to make sure we help protect national security doing
it on a local level. Uh And then they get
(15:25):
the federal grant to purchase the stuff. But then they're
using it on a much broader scale. So it's not
like they're not using it specifically for a counter terrorism
they're using it in all sorts of cases. There was
a story about a sheriff whose own vehicle got broken
into and uh and whose phone was stolen, who decided
(15:47):
to use this stuff to try and ostensibly to try
and stop the the string of car break ins. Some
people would say that perhaps it was more personal than that,
but the point being that this was not a counter
terrorism issue. This was you know, someone breaking in and
entering into cars, which is you know, that's that's a crime.
(16:07):
But you people have been arguing, like, what at what
level of crime do you consider the use of this
particular type of technology necessary to employ? Yeah, especially given
the expense not just in financial terms but in terms
of manpower or time so that's that's one problem, but
it's my spider sense is telling me that you have
(16:30):
a bigger problem I've got. I've got so many problems
with this, So let's let's talk about how it works first,
because this is this is what leads into where the
biggest problems that I have where the technology come from. So, uh,
to understand how this works, you've got to know how
cell phone works, all right, And we're gonna be super
high level here because I could do a full episode
(16:51):
on how cell phones work and you guys would be
stabbing me because you're wondering why I pulled you in UM.
But typically the easiest way of explaining it as cell
phones broadcast over radio frequencies, and you have cell phone
towers that represent a broadcast area. The towers are able
to accept the incoming signals from a cell phone and
(17:13):
outgoing signals that are going to cell phones within that
UM service area. They're doing so over specific frequency to
the phones. Your phone knows which frequency quote unquote knows
which frequency to be in because there's a master control
system that's telling the phone tune into this frequency so
that you can receive and transmit information. Technically, you're using
(17:34):
two frequencies so you can receive and transmit at the
same time. Then as you leave one cell phone service
area and you're starting to get closer to another, then
you have to be handed off right because if if not,
once you move too far away from the base station,
you would no longer have service. So this is similar
to when you move into an area that doesn't have
(17:55):
the towers that support the service you use. So if
you're like an A T and T customer and you
go into an area that's not supported by A T
and T, then you're out of lock. Your phone becomes
a brick, right or whatever's on your phone, that's all
you can use. So you have to have this handoff
technology for one tower to hand off the the service
(18:17):
to another tower as you're moving between them. So what's
happening is your phone is constantly sending little signals even
when it's not directly in use to say here I
am It's essentially saying I'm here. Yeah, it's exactly like
paying a server. It's doing this about every seven to
fifteen seconds. So this is why even if you don't
(18:40):
use your phone, the battery life gradually decreases, so the
reason it does this is very important because if it
didn't tell the cell phone towers, hey here I am,
you would never get texts or cell phone or you
never get a call. You couldn't you just play solitaire
or whatever. Yeah, because because the sis stone wouldn't know
where your phone is, so it wouldn't be able to
(19:02):
send the signal like it doesn't when someone dials your number.
It doesn't magically right connect to your phone. The system
has to be aware of where you are and as
this constant game of Marco polo to ensure that there's
this seamless transition, right because you as a person, you
are mobile, so you can move from location to location.
You are not always going to be next to the
(19:24):
same cell phone tower all the time. So your phone
has to constantly, like every seven to fifteen seconds, say
I'm here. Because if you're in the car and you're
traveling down the road, you're moving in and out of
different you know, cell tower ranges. So the different cell
towers have to be aware of where your phone is
so that you can continue to receive messages, phone calls,
(19:46):
that kind of stuff, or make them. Yeah. But the
problem is that because of this technology, you know that
this is what makes cell phones useful, but because of
that same technology, it's also what makes this sting ray
technology possible. So, because your phone is sending out these
messages and your phone doesn't know where the next cell
phone tower is, it's broadcasting these little messages and the
(20:08):
cell phone towers pick it up. Based upon the signal strength,
the cell phone tower knows if you are moving toward
it or moving away from it. The sting ray ends
up mimicking the cell phone tower. So your little cell
phone sends out a message and the stingray picks it up.
Sting ray now knows where your phone is, or at
least knows that your phone is in that area. As
the signal gets stronger, the sting ray knows that your
(20:30):
phone is getting closer to it. If you have triangulated this,
then it knows where you are. Or if you have
one of the other devices that pair with the sting
ray that can help track and locate, the sting ray
knows where you are. There's a laptop that you would
connect to this device that would give you the redoubt
that would be useful for a human being, because right
now we're talking all about technology that and data that
(20:53):
machines could use, but it is not useful to us
because we wouldn't be able to see it. But the
laptop expresses that in ways that make it possible for
you to see. Maybe with mapping software. It's plotting the
location against a map, as well as identification of the
phone numbers UM and the I D number that's unique
(21:17):
to that particular mobile phone. So the issue here is
that this this sting ray, we'll accept all of those
incoming messages, all those things. Yeah, anything that's within the
area that that the sensitivity of that antenna, it will
pick that up. So is it like, is it just metadata?
(21:41):
Well yes, originally, first it's just, first of all, just metadata,
just metadata, because metadata you don't need very much of
it to start making some very scary conclusions. You can
start to really narrow down who person is based upon
(22:01):
some metaday, their routines, what they do in the real world,
and when they do it, the phone numbers they might
be in contact with at that time. The phone number
of the device itself obviously would be very important. So
let's say that you two YouTube and Ben you are
you are? You are the cops? Okay, you're in your
(22:22):
van the power. Yeah, I know, not go crazy. Do
we have a tank? You do not have a tank.
We're not We're not Swanny. Was Swanny? Wasn't it? I
was thinking I Swanny. By the way, listeners, is is
just to the northeast of Atlanta. It's a little part
of Metro Atlanta area. Um and they have a tank.
(22:45):
So anyway, you are in a van, you have heard
about tanks, but you do not currently own one. You've
got plenty of donuts to get you through the day.
By the way, if you were in law enforcement, and
I am offending you, dear listeners, I'm merely poking fun.
I love you guys at any rate. So you guys
are looking at the incoming messages that are being hittop.
(23:07):
You're looking specifically for a phone number associated with a suspect,
a person of interest. You want to be able to
track this person down, but so far have been unable
to do so. You have heard that this person may
in fact be in this particular part of town, which
is why you have parked your van, And all you
are doing is looking for a hit of that particular
(23:28):
number as it moves through. And once you do, you
then try to triangulate, you locate, and then your your
send people out there to talk to this suspect or
person of interest. Now that that alone, that sounds like
that's okay. I mean, there might be some problems we
have here, but you're specifically looking for the hit. You're
(23:50):
not looking at the massive amount of information that's coming in.
You're looking for something specific. Yeah, and now, Matt, I know,
I know that, dude, I know, I know. It's the
pencil pushers who really are to blame. Don't don't, don't
bust my chops um so at any rate, Yeah, in
(24:11):
this case, you are specifically looking for a particular phone number.
It's a little more tricky if you don't know the
number though, right Like now you're looking for patterns. Now
you're looking specifically for activities that match what you suspect
your target is already doing. You're also possibly looking to
(24:32):
find out what phone numbers are being used in an area. Now,
this is where it really gets tricky because some of
these devices, not all of them, but the sting ray
and the trigger fish included both can tell you if
someone makes a call from within that area that the
sting ray covers. You can see what number they called. Now, now,
(24:54):
at least with the basic sting ray, you can't listen
in on the call. You just know the time, the number,
and the duration of the call. Hold on. It sounds
like we're getting to a point where we can listen
to these calls basic sting ray. Yeah. Okay, So remember
when I said you can upgrade. So sting ray is
(25:16):
it's a computer, is what it boils down to. I mean,
it's more than a computer, but it has elements of
a computer. It runs software. There is software that you
can install on the sting ray that does allow you
to listen in. There is fish Hawk, which is software
that allows you to eavesdrop upon conversations. And there's also Porpoise.
(25:38):
You might have noticed a theme I was gonna ask about.
They're in Florida, that makes sense. But anyway, so the
porpoise allows you to uh see texts that are sent
through here. So it's again it's messages or phone calls
that are sent from the phone out through the the
(26:03):
sting ray that go on. Now, this obviously raises a
lot of very tricky questions, particularly when it comes to
basic rights, because if you are just taking in everything
and you can potentially read all the text messages or
listening on any of the conversations that are going through.
(26:24):
Then remember this is just based on geography. You know,
you're not targeting, you're getting everything. There's no probable cause,
there's no probable cause, there's no warrant. So back in
our scenario, Ben and I in our readout, well, okay,
I'm driving, so Ben, you're alright, so you're the wheelman,
get it so you can see. Then we'll be able
(26:44):
to see all of this on a readout. A Matt, look,
look at his number. It's been going back and forth
from these two cell phone towers every freaking Thursday. Yeah.
Or it could be Ben saying, hey, Matt, look this
duphus over here thinks his girlfriend's gonna may can dinner tonight,
and we already know she ain't gonna do that, right buddy,
(27:04):
You guys are so good at after this comes out,
it's so I'll just be stopped on the street. We've
got more to say in this classic episode of tech stuff.
After these quick messages, that's funny until it happened, alright,
(27:31):
So at any rate, uh yeah, yeah, I mean technically,
if you have the right technology right, being the the
appropriate one for this, uh, and you have the correct
software on it, then you could be you could start
filtering through you could potentially read anything that's coming through
that that stingray device. So again, it would be any
(27:53):
phone that was within that range of the antenna. Um
you wouldn't necessarily I mean you probably wouldn't be storing
at all. I mean you could if you had a
large enough hard drive. That would be another thing you
would need to have in your array of technology piling
up very quickly. Yeah, and so this is starting to
(28:14):
sound probably very similar to the discussions we've had about
the n s A. You know, the fact that they
have been collecting cell phone data at the they're doing
it at the provider level, right like they're there, they've
got their ears on this national or even global level,
whereas we're really talking about very regional effects here. Yes,
(28:39):
still very concerning. So how much how much information can
it actually capture? Um, well, you know it's here all right.
Here's the thing. We don't know the full extent of
what I can capture because secrets have to be kept
for your safety from the creators of sting ray or
(29:00):
from the police departments. In the law enforcement. I'm just
gonna say yes from both. So there was a story recently.
I think it was I want to say it was
Santa Clara, California, but I could be wrong. It was
a It was a town in California, however, that recently
declined to purchase from Harris Corporation because they said there
(29:22):
were agreements that they would have been forced to enter
into that would prevent them from releasing any information about
the product, even in the face of a Freedom of
Information Act request. So an iron clad in yes, like
a nondisclosure agreement to trump all nondisclosure. How the heck
(29:43):
do you get aroun A. You mostly just drag your
heels as long as possible and hope that the judge
that ends up hearing any case about it is not
savvy enough to understand the implications of this technology. You
can appeal for national security, I think right. That's essentially
what they say is that if we were to tell
you what the capabilities of this technology were, then the
(30:07):
bad guys would be able to work around it, thus
making the technology useless and we'd only be getting your
boring text messages instead of the bad guys stuff. Well,
it's okay just to play the advocate here that kind
of reasoning, which is incredibly slippery and dangerous. It does
make sense if you think again about the ostensible purpose, right,
(30:29):
the the idea that this stuff could be rendered useless
if it wasn't a secret. But also, I'm just gonna
say the word I'm going to say is convenient. It's
a convenient reason well, and it's it's yeah, when you
have like a rubber stamp that's a secret, then how
do you have oversight? How can you make certain that
the figures that have been put into authority positions in
(30:53):
order to help the citizens, how can you make sure
that they are doing that that do that they've been
they've been tasked with, as opposed to abusing it or
misusing it, maybe not even abusing it on purpose, but
perhaps through you know, no no maliciousness, have been using
(31:14):
it incorrectly. Uh. And there have been arguments that judges
have allowed this kind of technology to be used because
the explanations they were given about what the technology did
were purposefully vague and limited, so that they would not
know the full extent of what this technology does. So,
(31:36):
in other words, here's where we're going to kind of
transition into more of the policy stuff, because you know,
that's really why I got you guys to come on here.
The technology we've kind of covered, you know, the very
basic ideas that he's a man in the middle kind
of attack. The reason why I brought you on here
is because this is my own personal perspective, my own opinion.
(31:58):
But my opinion is at this technology is dangerously close,
if not identical, to the concept of issuing a general warrant,
which is precisely what the Fourth Amendment was supposed to
protect us from. So the idea being that here in
the United States, by the way, this technology is being
used in other places. In fact, one of the reasons
(32:20):
that I brought up is because recently Sky News was
reporting about how it's being used in the UK. Uh.
It had been thought to have been used in the
UK for a while, but now there's kind of essentially
ironclad evidence that yes, it's being used as the UK. Yeah.
So the reason why, uh, you know, I brought you
guys in is this this idea of one of the
(32:42):
founding principles of the United States of America was that
the colonists didn't they weren't so crazy about the British
coming up and going into every single house looking for
a specific person, with no reason to suspect that the
person of ed was actually in the houses they were stopping.
It's just a general blanket search, right, So search and seizure.
(33:06):
The idea of being that we're looking for this person.
This person is is bad and so you have no
rights until we find this person. So we're gonna go
into your house and turn it upside down looking for
this person. If they're not there, too, well, okay, well
good for you, too bad for us. We're gonna go
do it to the next family. Ah. So, this approach
(33:28):
of using a device to pull in all incoming data,
even if you're looking for a really bad person, you're
getting everything, and it doesn't seem that different to me
than the approach of there's this bad person out there,
we're going to go through everybody's house until we find
that person. So for me, there are a couple of
things you have to establish. One of them is does
(33:51):
that data that you're sending out belong to you? Is
it really yours or you know, is it the companies
that you're using just to ostensibly send the information to
a cell tower to another person. Um, and then for me,
if you look at things like when the Boston bombing occurred,
and then the search for the Sarnative brothers afterwards, and
(34:11):
when the police were going through and essentially doing what
you're saying, searching through houses. Yeah, with just it's not
really a general warrant, but something kind of similar to that,
where yeah, I mean they didn't have all they didn't
have a warrant for each specific house they went through,
which they're supposed to if if I mean, your rights
(34:31):
as a citizen are supposed to say, listen, if you
don't have a warrant, you cannot come into my house.
That is a constitutional right guaranteed to me. Yeah, it's
the old, the old ticking time bomb reasoning, which I
find fairly disingenuous. Uh. When the idea we heard it before,
with the idea of using torture to obtain some sort
(34:53):
of confession or insider information, where people would say, well,
torture is not ordinarily allowed, but if there is a
bomb that is going to go off in a set
amount of time, and we have one person who knows
the information in custody, then shouldn't we torture somebody to
save a hundred people or whatever the number is. And
this with what's similar to me about this is that
(35:15):
this encounters um so many ways to bend rules that
are that exists for a reason, as you said, and
it doesn't really provide a way to bend those rules
back to their original shape. I mean, Jonathan, I can
think of already, uh several scenarios wherein this gig gets
(35:36):
sticky very quickly. Matt. I love that you mentioned, Uh.
It might not be the person actually using the phone, right,
It might be someone else, uh took a phone right
and used it as a burner. But the person, the
innocent person whose name is uh tied to that number
that I d they're going to be automatically suspect number
(35:57):
one or maybe even public enemy number one. Another question
is what if? What if? This search? Right? So let's
go back in, Um, Matt, you and I are still cops, Jonathan,
your FBI, your special investigator. All right, you came in,
you said, I'm taking over this investigation. I got a
little flip phone because I'm from the later seasons of
X Files, right exactly right, black two, black tie, whole thing.
(36:20):
And you say that we are looking for you know,
insert bad guy's name here. Uh. And while we're looking though, however, uh,
there are our search our vacuum cleaner approach brings in
another number that pings on your radar because you were
(36:41):
already suspicious of one person doing, you know, a federal
level crime. So this person who we were not looking for,
just showed up. What happens then, Uh? Well, I mean,
obviously I gotta take over the investigation. I've seen a
lot of episodes of various crime dramas, and that's what
the That's the only thing the FBI is around to
(37:02):
do is to push the local police force out of
this was my case. That's the way you have to
keep putting your sunglasses on and taking the Occasionally you
just hear the who yeah, yeah, Well I've got a
scenario kind of like that. Unlessing, Jonathan, do you want
to do? Answer no, No, I did. The only answer
to that that I have is that I would imagine
(37:25):
that at least until there are some strong precedents set
in in court about the actual use of this technology,
what it really can do, and whether or not it
truly is constitutional to use it in the way that
it's being used. I would imagine at least until that happens,
(37:46):
the FBI acts on that act on that information, because
if there if no one has come out and said
you can't do that, they're going to do that. And
I don't mean to cast aspersions on lawn enforcement of
the FBI. I realized that they have incredibly difficult and
very high stakes jobs, right and in order for them
(38:10):
to be able to do those jobs in an increasingly
complex technological world, there are some very tough questions we
have to answer. But the problem I have is that
these are questions that that seem to already have been
answered in the past. We just haven't applied the answer yet,
or people judges in particular, haven't understood the implications of
(38:31):
this technology, and that we're seeing some civil liberties fade
away as a result or get less, you know, like
like it's like you are protected against this except in
all of these other newer situations, many of which we
cannot legally tell you about because national security, right, because
(38:52):
if we told you about how we're violating your civil liberties,
then the bad guys would win. Like, well, technically, if
you're telling me that my civil liberties are being violated,
but you can't tell me how the bad guys have one. Yeah,
it's it's an interesting deliminate is one that we keep
running into. And this is not the first time. I
love that you mentioned there's precedent through about this throughout history.
(39:12):
I mean back when it was just the post office, right. Uh,
there were there were still these ongoing debates about what
kind of right to privacy should someone expect when they're
using the postal system. But you also mentioned advocacy groups,
So is there some organized opposition to there's quite quite
a lot. There's a lot of disorganized opposition too. But
(39:34):
the organized opposition includes like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the
e F E f UH, there's the American Civil Liberties Union,
the a c l u UH, there's EPIC. There are
all these different groups that are all about privacy and
civil rights that have identified problem areas with US technologies,
(39:54):
some of which have been they've kind of some of
them have couched their arguments, largely because they ay, we
can't come out and say how strongly strongly we feel
about this because of the secrecy involved. Without knowing everything,
we we don't want to suspect the worst. But we
can't discount it either because you won't tell us what
(40:17):
it does or how it's being used. Um, you know,
but there are a lot who are saying you need
to have rules set in place on how this technology
can be used, if in fact it is legal to
use it at all. So, for example, perhaps before you
use this you have to secure a warrant that specifies
(40:38):
who you are looking for and and narrows that down
to a point where you can't just throw out a
net and everybody who's caught in the net, their lives
are turned upside down for the duration of you sorting
out which person is the one you actually are interested in.
But they'll never know the collateral damage isn't really collateral
(40:58):
if they have no idea, Well, they might not ever know.
And you know, you could argue that in a world
where you never know that this is happening and it's
never affecting you, stick with me. You're in a world
where you you don't know that's happening to you and
it's not having any noticeable effect on your life. Ultimately,
(41:20):
you might be able to go to sleep at night
and think, well, it doesn't really matter, because if it
is not affecting my life. Then I mean, I don't
want it to happen, and I'm still going to protest
it happening because I don't think it's right. But if
it doesn't have a noticeable effect on my life at
the end of the day, when I draw my last breath,
it hasn't really made a difference, who cares. But we
(41:41):
might also live in a world where sometimes it does
affect us, even if we are perfectly innocent in all
in the eyes of the law. Let's just throw out
some examples of the n S saver, for instance, like
a person who decides to use the n S as
wide array of of surveillance techniques to look in on
an ex girlfriend. That's exactly the scenario I was going
(42:02):
to bring up. If you and I back in our scenario,
I decided to go back and use the machine for
a little bit because we parked to get some coffee
or something, and I see a number that I recognize
pop up, and I'm just like, oh, what is my
ex wife's new husband talking about? Oh, and then blah
blah blah blah blah. There you go down the rabbit
hole into weird personal things. Then, and this is the thing.
(42:26):
It's it's you know, the technology allows that to happen,
and humans being human are going to do it right.
Like it's it's not a question of whether the technology
itself is good or bad because it's a tool. Uh,
you might say, is it a tool that is appropriate?
Is there any is there are there appropriate use cases
(42:48):
for this tool? And if so, how are they defined?
I think that's the important step. We have to come
to the conclusion of does this tool make sense? If so,
in which context does it make sense? And how can
we be certain that in any given use case it
fits those contexts? And if if we can answer all
(43:09):
those to our satisfaction, fine, I question whether that's possible
particular technology. But but the problem is that people they'll
behave outside of that, right. I mean, if there is
the capability of someone to do this, you know, use
this technology in a selfish, possibly harmful way, for then
(43:30):
someone will do it. It's not a question of if.
It's a question of when and how frequently and uh,
because we've seen it with the n s A. It's again,
you know, you have to remember that at the end
of the day, they're real human beings in charge of
using this technology, and real human beings have real motivations
that happen every single day of their lives. Just like
(43:53):
you and me. We we go through our lives and
we realize, oh, man, if only I knew what was
going on in that person's head. Oh wait, I could
figure it out because I've got access to this technology.
It happens, right, it does. One thing immediately that we
could say that might be a glimmer of hope with
(44:14):
this is that many of the surveillance technologies or proprietary
systems rather do have strict usage logs where wherein you know,
any user with an I D dis tract. So, uh,
Lieutenant Frederick would be pinned up for they would say, hey, lieutenant,
why were you running by the way? Uh? Private in
(44:39):
the police force, have you militarized the entire police force? Yes,
several years in the future. He's not a rookie, he's
a private all right. Well, anyhow, whatever your position would be,
you know, there would be somebody over you, ideally who
would say, hey, we noticed that you were searching this
number which is not part of it, and you went
(44:59):
pretty into So so that's one thing, But then again
it relies as you said, on the policy on the system.
I'd like to take the danger even further because one
of the most dangerous potential things about the n s
A program and possibly Stingray and it's other accoutrement, is
the idea that this could be used by corrupt people
(45:20):
with access to the technology to do things like smear campaigns,
to do blackmail, or even extortion. And the most frightening
thing to me, although it is it is offensive, the
idea that an innocent person's uh terrible late night you
up text messages might be collected and saved for posterity,
(45:42):
it's more frightening that this could be used to curtail
people who were fighting against it. Yeah, I mean there's
there's that possibilities. Well, I mean, grant this would a
lot of that responsibility falls on the Harris Car operation
and how they deal with the orders. I imagine that
(46:04):
they mostly I mean before they were really working with
the FBI and some military companies or military organizations I
should say, um, And it was only relatively recently, in
the last maybe five to ten years, that they started
really working with the local law enforcement agencies. UM. I
(46:30):
don't know what there are other customers are like or
who they are, but you could presumably, I mean, even
if even if it's not made by Harris Corporation, because
it's out there and because people know about it, then
that's enough for someone to say, hey, let's pour some
money into making one of these of our own so
we can spy on people in the CIA, or the
(46:55):
CIA might say let's use this so we can spy
on people in other countries. I mean, it's definitely a difficult,
difficult subject. It's tricky, uh, I mean, obviously, spying throughout
history has all been about let's find out what they
know without letting them know we know. So at some
(47:16):
point you're like, well, if we if we assume that
the premise that spies are necessary is true, then these
other technologies need to exist for us to be able
to do that. Yeah, but maybe you will, maybe you
would argue that spying is not something that should happen
in the first place. Okay, this this is something that
I know we really wanted your opinion. Okay for a while,
so have we? And we asked Alex Winter the same question.
(47:40):
He's a filmmaker made the deep webs. Have we reached
the point of new return with technology? Has technology rendered
the concept of individual privacy obsolete or will it do so? Okay,
well this is super complicated, right, Sorry, it's a great question.
(48:01):
Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of this text stuff
classic episode right after we take this break. On the
one hand, you have stuff like this, the technology specifically
meant to intercept and perhaps even uh not just not
(48:22):
just intercept in the sense of finding out who is
talking to whom, but what they are saying. Right, You've
got that technology, that's one thing, And you could argue
that as long as that technology exists, then privacy might
only be an illusion. It might be something you believe
you have, but in reality, your information is being collected somewhere.
(48:43):
And of course we know that anything we post or
call or text through or whatever, it's going through an infrastructure.
So there is at least one entity out there that
has the access to it. The question is whether anyone
is looking at it or if it's just if it's
just a conduit. Right, So you could argue that privacy
is just an illusion in that case. There's another argument
(49:04):
to make that has nothing to do with surveillance. Facebook. Twitter,
we are we are voluntarily sharing more and more of
our lives. Instagram, Pinterest, really anything you can think of
where you are allowed a platform people are taking advantage
of it. YouTube another great example, periscope. So you're you're
(49:31):
volunteering to share a lot more information and you don't
necessarily think while you're doing it. This could potentially put
other things in my life at risk of becoming public knowledge,
whether it's because you're not paying enough attention or you
just don't realize how much information you are revealing every
time you post something. Um So, you could argue in
(49:55):
that case, privacy might also be an illusion, not because
there are all these ways of staring at what's really
going on, but because we're actually giving everything away and
we're just not aware of it. We're not aware of
the consequences of what we our own actions happened to
be um I would argue we haven't gone too far
(50:18):
in the sense that we could, if motivated to do
so and given the authority to do so, reverse a
lot of the things that have been happening. The question
of whether that's a reality or not, I mean, that's
kind of like the pie in the sky optimistic idealism,
the idea that people could actually be motivated to take action,
(50:42):
specifically through voting and through campaigning, and through bringing things
to attention and getting the word out there and getting
people behind the argument, Hey, we need to address this,
and we need to have it addressed to our satisfaction,
not just it's secret. You can't know. I think it's possible,
(51:02):
I think it would be really hard, and I don't
even though I think it's possible, I don't think it's
the plausible outcome. If I'm being perfectly honest, Um, it
would require enormous changes in momentum among vast, huge entities
out there that are bigger than any one person is.
(51:22):
So even if you let's say that you have an
ideal candidate for president of the United States in mind,
someone that you truly believe has the best interests of
the citizens at heart and wants to protect constitutional rights,
so they want to do right by the citizens and
make sure that the things they do truly do protect
them and do so in a way that follows the rules.
(51:44):
Even if that person exists and has put into the
position of president, you still have everything outs that it,
like from the local level to n essay too. You know,
organizations that do not directly answer to the president. It's
not like the president is capable of changing everything by
(52:05):
flicking a wand in fact, they're not supposed to be
able to do that. Doesn't have the position to president us. Yeah. So, uh,
this is why until I become benevolent dictator, we're going
to have these problems. Yeah, you know, you've you've been
saying that more and more often. I I appreciate the
posters that you've put up around the office. Uh they're
(52:28):
they're a little bit stark. I don't know, I you know,
I think they might be a bit too Soviet. Yeah,
I mean, it would help if they were in English.
But there's a lot of like crush this thing beneath
the boot. I just like the fist looked really like empowering.
And now I oh it does man, it do? Yeah,
(52:50):
it does. You're both on the list now, alright, so
any rate, No, but this is this was the reason
why why did you guys on here is because as
I know you guys, I assume you feel similarly to
to what I've stated. But I mean, if there's if
I have in any way misconstrued, I would I definitely
(53:11):
want you to have the opportunity to address it, well,
I will let Ben finish this idea that I'm going
to start. But when we spoke with Mr. Winter, he
had a surprisingly positive outlook privacy. That's wonderful he did
the people that he's been speaking with and communicating with
in his research on the subject of the deep web.
He's finding that there are a lot of people who
(53:33):
are freely focused on encrypting data and finding ways to
encrypt almost all communication that is done from a private
person's level, so that a company that is even handling
your data won't be able to decrypt it. Right. So,
in other words, the the the company that handles it,
it literally is just the conduit. It cannot it cannot
(53:56):
see the content and most it will see where it's
coming from and where it's going, but beyond that not
what the actual information is. He used the phrase. One
phrase I remember that he used was a renaissance of privacy,
which which I found inspiring because the the old argument
of well, if you have nothing to worry about, what
(54:17):
you're worried about hiding, right, it's kind of silly when
you consider that we do live in a world now
where let's say, Jonathan, let's say that you as an
FBI agent, love the part of towner and so much.
You said, you know what, guys, I'm gonna pull up
my tent stakes from Langley and I'm gonna come down here,
and I am gonna I'm gonna live here, and a
(54:39):
matter of fact, I'm gonna run for city commissioner because
I think, uh, this kind of stuff needs to be
dealt with in a public eye. And then all of
a sudden, all of this stuff, every time you had
used your phone in that region got leaked by somebody.
Or maybe you're running for sheriff, right, because we do
know that the sheriff's uh, at least in the Cab
(55:00):
County once played to corrupt the game here. Yeah, well,
or or even just something that, like, you know, a
mistake that you make at some point, and it may
be it may be one that you you know, it
could be that something you consciously did, or not even
a conscious mistake, something that due to your actions has
(55:21):
accidentally happened, and that you have already taken care of it,
You have fixed whatever problems there are, whatever the nature
of that thing is, you have you know, you've done
your time. However that I'm that might be for something
like that to like, let's say that you do want
to run for a local, local position and it has
no bearing whatsoever on your ability to carry out your duties.
(55:44):
We live in a world now where that stuff comes back,
I mean, like big time comes back. And none of
us are saints. You know, no one, No one has
gone through life completely unsullied. Even if you, you know,
are have the best of intentions. Something has happened at
some point in your life. Maybe you were just in
the wrong place at the wrong time, but that can
(56:05):
be bad enough. Yeah, that's true. I I do want
to say, Um, I really enjoyed I always enjoy being
on the show, And um, I don't want to speak
for you, mat but I'm I'm grateful that hates it. Yeah,
I'm grateful that we got it horrible for me. You guys,
you would be so impressed by vast ability to silently weep.
(56:25):
We sit in this room, salty salty beard. But the
only thing I would add to what we were saying
is that I love that we were talking about how
we are not casting aspersion on the individuals working in
law enforcement, which is so often an incredibly thankless job,
a fatally at times thankless job. And when you're when
(56:47):
you are representing the good guys, right, the force of
the force of crime prevention in our society, then the
thing is that the game you are playing is stacked
against you because the bad guys, whomever they may be,
do not have to follow the same rules. So I
(57:07):
while I think that, while I think that it's often easy,
at least in our fuel, for people to demonize law
enforcement as a faithless entity rather than a group of
human beings, I do completely believe that this is horrible technology.
I don't see a lot of cases of it being successful.
(57:32):
The a c l U has tried their best to
make a map of all the police areas they're using this,
but they still they had to say that this map
is incomplete. This is, I believe, very very close to
a kind of Pandora's box. Because as we know, the
price of technology continually decreases. Right, So what happens when
(57:52):
it's a steam gray as the price of a PS four, Well,
I mean you know it's it's being made in such
limited amounts. I mean you have to have the demand there,
and you have to have I would imagine there will
also be laws that will limit the use of this
because you have the giant phone companies that will lobby
very hard. They don't want the ability for someone to
(58:12):
spoof a cell phone tower to fall into the hands
of an average citizen. Their their business depends upon that
not happening. You're not the average citizen. No, No, I'm
the future benevolent dictator of the new World Order. I
think you need a tank the I think you don't
need a tank on speed pial. Yeah, yeah, but they yeah,
(58:36):
this is this is fantastic and I really appreciate the
opportunity to let more people know about this. Yeah, And
like I said, this technology has been around for a while.
In fact that the stingray stuff really started hitting headlines
a couple of years ago, back in that's when I
was really starting to get noticed and keep in mind,
and then use more than a decade before that. So
(58:57):
it's it's good to be aware of it. It's good
to ask these questions. And like I said, we may
at some point come to a point where we are
able to answer the questions I've been asking, to a
point where maybe I would be like, Okay, I understand
that in the world we live in the reality of
the world we live in that under these situations, this
might be an acceptable use of the technology. Uh, it's
(59:20):
just right now we haven't. We don't have those answers
because of secrecy. So yeah, it's it's it's definitely something
to be aware of. H I. I don't want to
be a fearmonger or anything like that, but um, it
is important that you know about it because I mean,
it's it's out there. Whether you know or not, it
is there, so it's better to know. All right, Well, guys,
(59:43):
thank you so much for joining the show. Obviously you
can find Matt and Ben's work at Stuff. They don't
want you to know. Well, I hope you feels weird
to say this. Enjoyed that classic episode about law enforcement
surveillance always a tricky thing to talk about. And if
(01:00:05):
you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future
episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out to me. The
best way to do so is on Twitter. The handle
for the show is text Stuff H s W and
I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is
(01:00:25):
an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
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