Fusion Centers & police spying a dangerous combination

MassPriavateI

DHS gives away 2,000 surveillance cameras to local businesses so police can spy on citizens:

The city of Milwaukee will be giving away 2,000 security cameras to south side businesses. A grant has been provided to the city and they are eager to get started.  Is this a violation of our constitutional 4th amendment right?  These cameras will come with facial recognition and subsequently will track your behaviors. They will also be able to collect meta data on your habits, cell phone conversations, what you buy and who you associate with. This information will be collaborated with your cell phone id and facial recognition software provided by these cameras to monitor your voyage around town and record your trends.

This information will be trolled by the Milwaukee Fusion spy center, used to track your internet, cell phone activity and behaviors. Stored and saved for future reference indefinitely.  The original intent of fusion centers was to prevent terrorist attacks from foreign interests.  Now it’s used to spy on American citizens  The fusion center works in conjunction with the NSA, CIA, FBI and local police to profile everyone. The most frightening thing about fusion centers is the lack of over site and the inability to hold a fusion center accountable both personally and legally.
http://therundownlive.com/big-brother-milwaukee-give-away-2000-surveillance-cameras-citywide-nsa-spy-grid/

Law enforcement lies over the illegal use of ‘Stingray’ to spy on cell phone users:

Article first appeared at simplejustice.us

While courts have taken little issue with law enforcement lying (or, in the parlance of the judiciacy, “pretext”) to the public, they assume they’re being told the truth. After all, they’re the judges, and judges are, of course, special.  It’s not like law enforcement can’t trust them, or worse still, think so poorly of their benefactors that they would treat them the way they treat the public.

For those who don’t keep up with the law enforcement technology, Stingray is a device that mimics a cell tower and captures phone data.  A few years back, the WSJ stumbled upon it, and it turns out that the cops were having a field day with it, but for one detail.  They had neither sought nor obtained judicial approval to use it. Heck, they didn’t even tell the courts it existed. But, oh boy, did it exist.

During an appellate argument in a sexual battery case in Tallahassee, some previously unknown details came out. From Wired via Tim Cushing at Techdirt:

Police in Florida have offered a startling excuse for having used a controversial “stingray” cell phone tracking gadget 200 times without ever telling a judge: the device’s manufacturer made them sign a non-disclosure agreement that they say prevented them from telling the courts.

The shocking revelation, uncovered by the American Civil Liberties Union, came during an appeal over a 2008 sexual battery case in Tallahassee in which the suspect also stole the victim’s cell phone. Using the stingray — which simulates a cell phone tower in order to trick nearby mobile devices into connecting to it and revealing their location — police were able to track him to an apartment.

During proceedings in the case, authorities revealed that they had used the equipment at least 200 additional times since 2010 without disclosing this to courts and obtaining a warrant.

This is a stunning argument, that they can’t get warrants or even disclose to the courts that they’re using Stingray because of a non-disclosure agreement with the manufacturer.

In one way, this is reminiscent of the fight over what makes the little black box delightfully known as the Breathalyzer 5000 work, which had a secret, proprietary code that the manufacturer refused to reveal.  Which is fine, but then it can’t be used as evidence in court because its validity wasn’t subject to hearing.  You want to keep your secret? Cool. But then, find another use for your box, pal.

That there may be NDAs associated with Stingray, however, has no bearing on whether law enforcement can use the device without violating people’s constitutional rights.  It raises critical questions, however, since their use is happening anyway, just without court approval.

This should put the spotlight on manufacturers of “stingray” devices. If they’re using NDAs to keep the public uninformed and prevent the discussion of usage even in court, that’s a huge problem. If these agreements are common across manufacturers, then there can be no doubt that law enforcement agencies across the nation have falsified reports and generated alternate narratives to cover up the origins of obtained evidence.

We have long known that law enforcement has no qualms about fabricating a phony source of information to conceal the true source, known as “parallel construction.”  Connect the dots. Tech marvels that no one know about. Conceal the true sources of information and present a manufactured story to the court and defense. No warrants, ever.

For law enforcement, the core argument is twofold, that it works and that if they go through the courts, then everyone will know about it and it won’t work as effectively.  Plus, courts are a hassle, and it’s law enforcement that keeps us safe at night from the rapists and terrorists, not pointy-headed judges who think they have a clue and pull out the big old rubber stamp anyway.

How does that sit with you, Judge?  Bet you didn’t realize that you were little more than a cog in the law enforcement wheel, to be ignored and avoided whenever possible because you just get in the way of their saving us from the killers?

The problem, at least for the rest of us, is that this reduces everything we do to a total sham.  we argue about phony scenarios invented to conceal the cool toys that are being used to seize evidence from unwitting defendants, right under the nose of clueless judges.

And ironically, it’s those same judges, who are being treated like mushrooms, who refuse to order the prosecution to disclose the information we need to defend.  Maybe this doesn’t matter, as we would never get the truth no matter what a judge ordered, but we don’t even get a fighting chance if we can’t get a judge to enforce nifty rules like Brady.

Whether this is a Stingray problem, a tech problem, a systemic problem or more can’t be known for sure. That’s the nature of running a legal system where one leg of the stool isn’t held to account, lies with impunity and ignores such “technicalities” as the Constitution.
http://blog.simplejustice.us/2014/03/05/we-could-tell-you-judge-but-then-wed-have-to/#more-20231

Rand Paul: ‘What you do on your cell phone is none of their damned business!’

Senator Rand Paul took the stage at Friday’s Conservative Political Action Conference and declared that cell phone records sought by government agencies were ‘none of their damned business!’

‘If you have a cell phone, you are under surveillance’ from the federal government, Paul warned in his biggest moment. ‘I believe what you do on your cell phone is none of their damned business!’ 

‘Stand up and be heard,’ he told the crowd during one stemwinder about anti-terror cases involving indefinite detention. ‘We must defend our rights.’ 

Paul put his concerns about the NSA on front pages with a class-action lawsuit last month – on behalf, he said, of hundreds of millions of Americans who have telephones.

The federal government, the lawsuit alleges, has taken the idea of an individual search warrant and expanded it to apply to massive groups of citizens at the same time.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2575923/What-cell-phone-none-damned-business-Rand-Paul-thrills-libertarians-unites-CPAC-anti-NSA-stemwinder.html#ixzz2vJgoH5HA

http://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2014/03/fusion-centers-police-spying-dangerous.html