{"id":42738,"date":"2021-07-27T12:21:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-27T16:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=42738"},"modified":"2021-07-27T12:21:00","modified_gmt":"2021-07-27T16:21:00","slug":"big-brother-is-watching-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=42738","title":{"rendered":"Big Brother Is Watching"},"content":{"rendered":"

On July 22nd, Forbes<\/a> posted an article about one method the Federal Bureau of Investigation is using to spy on Americans. The article is technical, but very important.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

The FBI is using a controversial technology traditionally used to locate smartphones as a car tracking surveillance tool that spies on vehicles\u2019 on-board WiFi.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Known as a Stingray or a cell-site simulator, the tool masquerades as a cell tower in order to force all devices in a given area to connect into it. Agents can then pick the number they\u2019re interested in and locate the device. Normally that would be a mobile phone, but a search warrant application discovered by Forbes shows it can also be used to find vehicles, as long as they have onboard Wi-Fi. That\u2019s because car Wi-Fi systems act like a phone, in that they reach out to mobile networks to get their data. So it makes sense that police would use it to find a car, though this appears to be the first case on record of it happening.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The application to use the Stingray was filed by the FBI in Wisconsin in May, as it sought to locate a vehicle – a Dodge Durango Hellcat – it believed was being used by a man indicted for drug dealing and firearms possession crimes.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The FBI had already been given permission to use other kinds of surveillance to locate another vehicle, a \u201cblack Jeep,\u201d associated with the suspect, according to the warrant application. Again, they were surveillance techniques traditionally used to track cellphones, the first being a pen register, which gets data from a cellphone provider to monitor connections made by the device to other phones or electronic devices. The second was a so-called \u201cping warrant,\u201d which shows the locations of cell towers used by a device. That gave them the location of a car dealership, where they learned the suspect had traded in the Jeep for the Dodge, the FBI wrote in its application.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article concludes:<\/p>\n

The case highlights how cars are no longer just vehicles, but networks on wheels, and all that data can be useful to government agencies. As Forbes recently reported, police can and have acquired location data from a car\u2019s airbag system or brake light module<\/a>. They\u2019ve also previously requested location data from companies that have in-car systems that track millions of vehicles\u2019 GPS coordinates every day<\/a>, including GM OnStar, and fleet management providers Geotab and Spireon.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cMany people don\u2019t realize that modern cars aren\u2019t just wheels and an engine anymore, they are computers and cellphones too,\u201d says Nate Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. \u201cThese features offer convenience and efficiency to drivers, but they also generate sensitive information about where we go and what we do. Strong privacy protections are important for this kind of vehicle information, just as they are for information generated by our cell phones and laptops.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am all for giving law enforcement all of the tools they need, but this seems to me to be a bit much. Unless I have broken a law, it is none of the government’s business where I am. I fear that this technology could easily be used to track innocent people in the future. It has the potential of being another step in the government’s efforts to limit the freedom of Americans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On July 22nd, Forbes posted an article about one method the Federal Bureau of Investigation is using to spy on Americans. The article is technical, but very important. The article reports: The FBI is using a controversial technology traditionally used … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[14093,11084,350,14092],"class_list":["post-42738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cell-site-simulator","tag-federal-bureau-of-investigation-fbi","tag-forbes","tag-stingray"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42738"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42739,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42738\/revisions\/42739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}