Congress and Courts Weigh Restraints on N.S.A. Spying

Gabriella Demczuk/The New York Times

Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, has proposed a battery of new disclosure requirements for intelligence agencies.

ADAM LIPTAK and JEREMY W. PETERS | New York Times | November 18, 2013

WASHINGTON — Congressional critics of the National Security Agency program that collects the telephone records of millions of Americans stepped up their efforts as the Supreme Court on Monday turned away an unusual challenge to the scope of the surveillance.

The intensifying push against the N.S.A. on both the legal and legislative fronts reflected new pressure being put on the extensive surveillance effort in the wake of revelations by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden, pressure that is running into stiff resistance from congressional leaders of both parties as well as the Obama administration.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed the challenge directly with the Supreme Court, arguing that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had “exceeded its statutory jurisdiction when it ordered production of millions of domestic telephone records that cannot plausibly be relevant to an authorized investigation.”

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Meet Stingrays, The Surveillance Tech The Government Doesn’t Want To Talk About

Andrea Peterson | Think Progress | May 17, 2013

For nearly two decades U.S. law enforcement agencies have used counter-terrorism devices known as “stingrays” after the brand name of one variant or ISMI (international mobile subscriber identity)-catchers to track locations in domestic investigations, but information about the devices has been kept carefully under wraps from the public and sometimes even from judges authorizing its deployment. Last week an Arizona judge ruled that a tracking warrant used to deploy the device against Daniel David Rigmaiden, who is accused of collecting millions of dollars in rebates by submitting fraudulent tax returns, was valid despite the fact that the FBI failed to disclose they would be using a stingray or explain how the devices functioned in that warrant.

Much of what is known about their current use in the U.S. comes from a treasure trove of heavily redacted documents being dripped out month by month thanks to an Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit and a handful of public cases like Rigmaiden that have been released publicly. Speaking at a Yale Information Society Project (ISP) on biometrics and location tracking earlier this year, EPIC Appellate Advocacy Counsel Alan Butler noted:

“The biggest problem I see with stingrays is the secrecy aspect — The fact that we don’t know how they are used, how exactly they work, what different techniques are available […] The accountability measures that would be in place for other warranted, more standard surveillance methods are really nonexistent here.”

One thing we do know, according to statement at the same conference from the American Civil Liberty Union’s (ACLU) Chris Soghoian, is that stingrays work by essentially exploiting a security vulnerability in cell service technology: Phones are constantly searching for the nearest signal so they know what tower to connect to when a call comes in, and phones will automatically connect to any tower identifying itself as having the strongest signal strength from your carrier.

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