This is Dale Carson live on Facebook. I'm an attorney in Jacksonville, Florida,
a retired FBI Agent and a former Dade County cop. Also a criminal defense attorney. I wanted to talk to you today about a Stingray
Machine. It's a device that law enforcement uses to
invade our privacy. Sometimes with reason, sometimes maybe not. But what it does, is it creates and emulates
a cell tower. So what happens is, the officer is ride around
in his vehicle close to you and perhaps you're under surveillance for some reason, known
only to the government. And that machine communicates with your phone
and pretends like it's the best cell phone tower reception that you could possibly receive. And your phone then, unknowingly and unwillingly,
links up to their device. In that way, the government can track you,
monitor your phone calls and certainly read your text messages. Why is that a problem? Well I guess it's not a problem if you're
a big supporter of government and you want the government to be able to find fugitives,
probably a good thing. But the problem is that when that device is
emulating a cell phone tower, it picks up your phone and my phone. We weren't doing anything wrong, but all of
a sudden, we are essentially under surveillance by the government; both police departments
and federal government. And perhaps some of the agency groups. The result is that our privacy is being reduced
by these new technologies. A lot of people are suggesting the legislators
need to create laws that restrict the use of such devices, perhaps even the creation
of such devices. It wasn't too long ago that we were prohibited
from having scanners, electronic scanners that monitored the 900 hertz band, which is
where the original cell phone transmissions occurred. So, Tandy, the radio companies that produced
those kinds of monitors, bear cat scanners, really restricted a narrow area of the bandwidth
so that we investigators or private citizens were not able to monitor those conversations. In fact, it became illegal to do so. The one exception, oddly enough, was cell
phones or home phones that were used and were analogged so that you could, if they could
be picked up on your baby monitor, you weren't in violation of the law if you listened to
those things. But if you intentionally set out to listen
to someone else's phone call, then of course that was a violation. Florida has some very strict laws. This is a 2 party consent state which means
that both parties to a conversation being recorded, or all the parties to a conversation
being recorded, have to a'gree to that recording or it has to be blantantly obvious. I look around the room, there are a number
of people and i go "I'm going to record this conversation," and then I put the phone down
on the desk and then everyone knows it's being monitored. But the broader problem is that in the use
of these scanners, these new stingrays, we are not aware that we're being picked up and
monitored. And the courts have yet to really address
the issue. I know of one judge who said "If you got that
information through a scanner of this type or a stingray type scanner, the case is thrown
out." But that's only because the government refuses
to disclose information about that technology, how it actually works and what its capabilities
are. Because it is secret, basically, from law
enforcement both federal and state. And the result is we don't know what they're
doing with the information. It wasn't too long ago that here in our actual
office, which is downtown Jacksonville, we open the door and the entire SWAT team from
the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office was staged in the hallway because we had an individual
who was going to turn himself in. He was a serious felon, or accused of serious
felonies, and they had tracked him through the use of his cell phone. So, if you want to avoid the problem, the
only way to do so is to stop using your cell phone, certainly phone applications. And when we think about it, things are much
deeper than just the cell phone tracking. It's not difficult for people to know what
sites you visit, what aspects of those sites you log into and search. Search terms are becoming a useful piece of
evidence for prosecutors in criminal cases. When you try to deny that you cut up the body
and you've gone to a site where it shows you how to do that sort of thing, it's kind of
hard to argue that you didn't go search for that information. So we have all become enamored of our cell
phones, I mean I'm guilty of it as well. And the problem with this is that when we
think we're not being monitored, we likely are being monitored. And if not instantly, but years from now when
are you accused of a crime, the government can go back and search the NSA databases where
they've stored all of this information and prosecute you for a crime you weren't even
aware was on the books at the time. So, I tell everybody. All of our clients are informed of the potentials
of cell phone monitoring and how the government can track you. So if you don't want to be bothered, by the
government. And there's an interesting case that goes
back to 1928 and there was a Supreme Court Justice. His name was Brandeis. And what Brandeis said in a well known case
called Olmstead, this was in 1928, he essentially said that we've got to be real careful of
this. That we shouldn't allow these monitorings
of, at the time, telephone lines. Because one day, the government may be able
to get so far advanced that it could look at our private records in sealed drawers and
we won't even become aware of it until we're actually prosecuted for something. That was in 1928 and it took 90 years for
it to happen, but it's here today. And 2 other things that Brandeis said that
I thought were really insightful 1- not only will they look in our drawers and figure out
what we've been doing and we won't know it's happening. He also said the most important right we as
Americans enjoy is the right to be let alone by Government so that we can pursue happiness. And that of course is being restricted. If you believe your phone is being monitored,
or you're being tracked, you can't really express yourself in ways that you might feel
comfortable expressing yourself to friends and family because you're concerned the government
will be listening to what you're saying. And will at some point in the future, use
that against you. That is a serious, serious problem. So we lose the value of pursuit of happiness. And another way of looking at that is what
we call the marketplace of ideas. People who are unfettered by the Government
and not restricted, talk about things that may sound kind of odd. We don't need to embrace necessarily what
we're saying or thinking, but we need to be able to explore the possibility of new ideas. The marketplace for ideas is what it's been
called. And so when we're restricted from doing that,
our lives change. I know from my own part, I'm very careful
about what I say and I don't express, sometimes, my new feelings because I'm concerned that
will reflect poorly on me. Now, we should perhaps all be concerned about
our behavior and things reflecting poorly on us. But we also have the freedom to think thoughts
that we want to think and explore, maybe, those particular ideas with other people close
to us to see whether or not that's a way we ought to go. I mean, I am personally considering arguing
that we should remove all traffic citations so the police officers can no longer issue
traffic citations. I can tell you my police officer friends,
they don't like that very much. But my inner city people who are constantly
harassed with traffic citations, for $159 which is very difficult for them to pay. They're happy with the idea. But if I didn't say anything about it, we'd
never explore that concept of maybe allowing tickets to be written by somebody else we
can all hate. And we can start, once again, appreciating
and caring for our law enforcement officers who are no longer taxed by writing citations
and just generally pissing off someone. And that's the concept of marketplace ideas
and if we can't feel free and comfortable talking about those kinds of things that concern
all of us, then we're living in a sheltered world controlled by people that listen to
our conversations and determine, on their own determine whether or not that conversation
is important. So be aware that these devices are more and
more in use everyday and they should concern us. And there are no rules that the government
has to follow in the use of these devices. Until those rules are established and followed,
we should all be concerned at the loss and erosion of our privacy. Next, and not now, but next we wanna talk
about these weird little flying things that go everywhere. And all of a sudden you look up and here a
buzzing and you're being monitored by a drone. That is another aspect of the slow erosion
of our personal privacy. IF you have questions or ideas you'd like
to hear us talk about here at Dale Carson Law, please don't hesitate to contact us. We enjoy being on the forefront of protecting
your rights from overreaching by the government. Now I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for joining us. "Before we go, we have a couple questions. James Huggins wants to know how he can get
rid of cops illegally hacking his network and sabotaging his devices so they don't work
as well as they should." Dale: Well one of the things we've talked
about is storing all of your electronic gear in Faraday bags. If you were to store in it bags, that will
prevent them from monitoring it or accessing your data. But of course you can't use the phone. So it is an increasing problem and the Bureau
and other federal agencies have the ability. What we have to rely on is the individual
integrity of police officers, FBI Agents and federal officers to do the right thing. They know that in connection with what's known
as a Title 3 wiretap, that they have to have exhausted all of the traditional investigative
techniques. What does that mean? That means talking to your friends, and we
don't want them talking to our friends, but that is a traditional investigative technique. Conducting actual physical, what we call physical
surveillance on your person, you can eventually detect things like that. But clearly the internet is not controlled
by you and I as civilians. It is controlled by the government. Until that ends, we are subject to the scrutiny
of other people who may not like us and may be offended by our views. And that's a danger.
