{"id":6223,"date":"2011-11-03T20:16:30","date_gmt":"2011-11-04T00:01:39","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-03T20:16:30","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=6223","title":{"rendered":"Wired.com: “Feds\u2019 Use of Fake Cell Tower: Did it Constitute a Search?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wired.com: Threat Level: Feds\u2019 Use of Fake Cell Tower: Did it Constitute a Search?<\/a> by Kim Zetter:<\/p>\n

Federal authorities used a fake Verizon cellphone tower to zero in on a suspect\u2019s wireless card, and say they were perfectly within their rights to do so, even without a warrant.<\/p>\n

But the feds don\u2019t seem to want that legal logic challenged in court by the alleged identity thief they nabbed using the spoofing device, known generically as a stingray. So the government is telling a court for the first time that spoofing a legitimate wireless tower in order to conduct surveillance could be considered a search under the Fourth Amendment in this particular case, and that its use was legal, thanks to a court order and warrant that investigators used to get similar location data from Verizon\u2019s own towers.<\/p>\n

The government is likely using the argument to avoid a court showdown that might reveal how stingrays work and open debate into the tool\u2019s legality. <\/p>\n

Stingrays spoof a legitimate cellphone tower in order to trick nearby cellphones and other wireless communication devices into connecting to the tower, as they would to a real cellphone tower. When devices connect, stingrays can see and record their unique ID numbers and traffic data, as well as information that points to a device\u2019s location. To prevent detection by suspects, the stingray sends the data to a real tower so that traffic continues to flow.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}