The US Is Totally Tapped

[unhappycamper]

http://watchingamerica.com/News/228411/the-us-is-totally-tapped/

It’s no longer only powerful electronic intelligence, but also the U.S. local police that monitor American citizens using methods of which philosophers have never dreamed.

The US Is Totally Tapped
Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland
By Mariusz Zawadzki
Translated By Natalia Suta
12 December 2013
Edited by Kyrstie Lane

Results of an investigation carried out by the national daily newspaper USA Today are — in a certain sense — more shocking than everything we have discovered about the American Big Brother so far. At least for Americans. It turns out that the local police are using surveillance methods similar to the ones adopted globally by the National Security Agency. What is more, their cost is surprisingly low.

A tracking device called a StingRay could be bought with only $400,000. It’s the size of a suitcase and imitates a mobile phone transmitter tower. It intercepts data from all phones within a mile such as text messages and conversations. Policemen spying on a suspect or a group of suspects can — in real time — listen to and read everything that goes through their mobiles. Due to its small size, the StingRay can be hidden in a police car.

In many states policemen have easy access to data from mobile phone towers, and they can spy on suspects in a literal sense, meaning they can observe live where they are staying, going, etc. It is possible even when a phone is not being used but just kept in a pocket.

~snip~

This greatly “dehumanized” surveillance is relatively easy to accept. Yet it makes a difference when you are monitored by a policeman from a local police station that you pass every day on your way to work. Here come the questions: Where is the limit? Is it acceptable to electronically spy on every person who was in the vicinity of a sheriff's car when someone broke one of its windows and stole a gun, just as happened in South Carolina? Or was it acceptable to use a StingRay to follow people who were going to protest against the International Trade Conference? This is what happened in Miami.

[loudsue]

1. This comes under the "are you shitting me???? " category.

I live in a small town. Everyone knows everyone. If one of the cops had one of these, he could blackmail the entire county. Picture the same thing on a broader scale: can these be obtained by wealthy citizens who might want to blackmail a politician into doing their bidding?