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StingrayFeature

The DOJ has issued new guidelines governing stingray utilise that bring such deployments into marginally better alignment with primal ceremonious rights — but there are some significant limitations to the new policies as well. First, the practiced news: The new recommendations specifically state that these devices are to exist used in a matter that is "consistent with the requirements and protections of the Constitution, including the 4th Subpoena…[and] including the Pen Register Statute."

The 7-page document so details the nuts of how stingray devices operate and notes that such devices must exist configured to deed as elementary pen registers, meaning they collect only metadata almost contacted numbers and durations of a call, not text messages, IMs, emails, or the actual contents of a phone conversation. The exact capabilities of stingrays is shrouded in enormous amounts of secrecy thanks to the mandatory NDAs that cloak their operation. The report states that warrants are now required for the use of a stingray, which constabulary enforcement must properly represent to a judge that stingray access is being sought, and that explains how the data will be handled and deleted following the conclusion of the investigation.

Stingrays

These basic concerns accept been largely left to patchwork policies that, intentionally or not, largely boiled down to "Whatever the individual agent thinks is appropriate." Merely every bit with license plate scanners, there's been no insight into how long information was being kept, how that data was used, or what information was being gathered. (For instance, license plate readers obviously read license plates, merely may or may not cantankerous-reference that information with other facts about the driver and share it with tertiary-party companies or other law enforcement offices.)

As Techdirt points out, there are many qualifications to this stride. It only applies to federal cases, it's a policy and guidelines paper as opposed to a binding legal document, and it doesn't apply to land or local officials who remain costless to operate in any way they cull. This was hammered home earlier this week, when the Indiana state law refused to turn over information related to stingray use and the Harris corporation's restrictive NDAs.

Indiana State Police

According to the Indiana State Law, the information was refused because disclosing information about the FBI'south use of stingrays or the NDAs in question could "threaten public safety by exposing or disclosing detailed information related [to] the functioning and capabilities of equipment and programs the Department possesses to foreclose, mitigate, or respond to an deed of terrorism… or agricultural terrorism."

I haven't lived in Indiana for a few years, but I grew upwardly there and spent the starting time 32 years of my life in various parts of the country or immediately across the Ohio river, in Louisville, KY. I would like to take a moment to reassure everyone that Indiana does non suffer from an abundance of would-be ISIS recruits or fiendishly crafty militants out to steal our precious bodily fluids corn and soybeans.

The discrepancy betwixt these policies points to the demand for coherent reform, uniform best practices, and consistently practical rules of acquit for the use of stingray devices across local, state, and federal jurisdictions. No i is denying these devices can provide law with vital information under the right circumstances. In certain cases, a stingray could conceivably salve lives or prevent disaster. The current status quo, all the same, gives far too much ability to officials who have shown far likewise much willingness to misrepresent the engineering science to achieve their ain ends.