Feds' Use of Fake Cell Tower: Did it Constitute a Search?
By Kim Zetter November 3, 2011
Federal authorities used a fake Verizon cellphone tower to zero in on a suspect's wireless card, and say they were perfectly within their rights to do so, even without a warrant.
But the feds don't 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's own towers.
The government is likely using the argument to avoid a court showdown that might reveal how stingrays work and open debate into the tool's legality.
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's location. To prevent detection by suspects, the stingray sends the data to a real tower so that traffic continues to flow.
By gathering the wireless device's signal strength from various locations, authorities can pinpoint where the device is being used with much more precision than they can get through data obtained from the mobile network provider's fixed tower location.
{ article continues at the above URL }
Note I posted an article about the StingRay to comp.dcom.telecom on
23-SEP-2011 which references this Wall Street Journal article:which has a picture of the StingRay and a graphic showing how it works. The above WSJ URL is still valid as of today, 5-NOV-2011. I always check "older" URLs now because some newspaper sites expire URLs after a few days and have no archives (e.g., San Jose (CA) Mercury-News).