Category: Law enforcement

ICE protest surveillance

On By Paul HubbardIn Law enforcement, Politics, Radio, recommendationsLeave a comment

As I have written about before, taking your phone to a protest is 100% going to get you written into various government data stores. This story today confirms that ICE is using Stingrays.

So. As explained in Domestic surveillance and police riots, you can get a cheap Android device to communicate and photograph; since then there’s a new EFF project called Rayhunter that I’d also highly recommend. It’s inexpensive and quite simple:

  1. Go to Amazon and spend 31 bucks on an Orbic LTE router.
  2. Go to the Github page and get the Rayhunter firmware for it
  3. Install it
  4. Take the Rayhunter with you – even without connecting it to a computer, it will display if it detects a Stingray or other cell-site simulator.
  5. Consider a donation to the EFF for work like this.

A picture, just to show what it looks like. There are other supported devices and many places to buy them; this was easiest at the time.

P.S. – on Mac, you may need to run this to remove the app-signing error:

xattr -c installer

Worth a read: 99 problems

On By Paul HubbardIn essays, Law, Law enforcement, PoliticsLeave a comment

Ever wondered about your rights? Can, for example, you say no when the police ask to search your car?

Caleb Mason is here to help. (PDF)

This is a line-by-line analysis of the second verse of 99 Problems by Jay-Z, from the perspective of a criminal procedure professor. It’s intended as a resource for law students and teachers, and for anyone who’s interested in what pop culture gets right about criminal justice, and what it gets wrong.

http://pdf.textfiles.com/academics/lj56-2_mason_article.pdf

The song is often known for it’s crude language. I had avoided it, but according to Jay-Z and this article, it’s a reference to a K-9 search dog, not a woman or women. Also, you can’t refuse to exit the car, a locked trunk doesn’t require a warrant, and my home state is 2-party-recording consent.

Well worth a read. I’m no lawyer, but this was entertaining and informative.