After two months, only two cities have sent me their search warrant records. All other states have given me rejections saying:
1. The records are on paper and never transcribed.
2. The records are digital, but there's no way to query from a frontend.
3. The records are digital and queryable, but the agency considers the use of queries "creating reports", where tons of states have case law backing this up.
4. Nothing, because they haven't responded yet.
So far I've received three enormous fee estimations of ~500k, ~400k and ~150k. Obviously not affordable.
Chicago is one of the few cities that sent records (though, it took a year). They've sent three separately sized files for the same timeframe - 11k rows, 9k rows, and 20k rows. The data is messy, and there is some very important info missing from their records. Can't speak too much about it yet, since I'm still confirming the reasons. It's been blindingly frustrating trying to get a consistent message about whether the data is even accurate.
All this goes to show that police agencies don't make records on search warrants even remotely easily available to the public, and we have no way of gauging whether our constitutional rights are being upheld throughout the US. It's honestly very sad.
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It's not there to get information, it's there to give the appearance that they give information.
The most used excuse here is it will take "too many resources".
They often follow the same set of steps to legally delay or prevent information going out.
There is a FOI ombudsman, but they are so swamped the backlog is enormous.
> don't make records on search warrants even remotely easily available to the public,
It seems like the right reform would be for all approved search warrants to be automatically posted online one year after issuance.
I know it is unlawful to ask about arrests without convictions as a precursor to employment in at least a few jurisdictions in the US. [0]
[0]: https://www.workplacefairness.org/criminal-records-workplace...
That's probably the case as I believe warrants can be requested even when court is not on session. As someone who has sat in court a couple times I can say the only warrant I ever saw a judge issue was a bench warrant.
It'd be a good idea to limit the set of record points to only those that you're interested in.
https://www.wired.com/story/stingray-secret-surveillance-pro...
edit: to be clear, I think the government itself could really do with reeling it back a bit as well - but this very news is a reminder that some people are watching out for the watched.
https://www.aclu.org/cases/florida-stingray-foia (2014)
https://www.aclu.org/cases/aclu-florida-v-city-sarasota-stin... (2014)
https://www.aclu.org/cases/foia-request-justice-department-p... (2014)
... and tons more, at https://www.aclu.org/defending-our-rights/court-battles?topi...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/11/prosecutors-drop...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/alleged-getaway-...
source: https://www.wired.com/2017/06/researchers-use-rideshares-sni...
> At Trudeau airport, Radio-Canada detected the catcher's presence through the use of a CryptoPhone — a cellphone look-alike that emits red alerts when a fake antenna tries to catch its signal. Several red alerts were received, throughout the afternoon and early evening, in the section of the airport for U.S. departures.
source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/trudeau-airport-spyi...
> The devices are operated out of at least five U.S. airports, "covering most of the U.S. population". It is unclear whether the U.S. Marshals Service requests court orders to use the devices.
Once you have a number pop up on the Stingray you distribute that person's photo to all the border agents.
Since airports are one of the very few places where you can positively identify a certain person was there at a certain time, you can combine a passenger list with a device list to get some soft matches to previously unlinked devices.
Combine that linked metadata with other dragnet metadata, and you're going to learn a lot.
There are issues with some units that downgrade your data signal to a slower connection than you would get with a normal cell tower.. but otherwise you would never know the difference.
The person you are replying to is actually making an excellent point as most current methods of detecting stingrays are heavily reliant on the "tower" moving or changing.
Like, if my neighbor is a drug dealer, and the police get a warrant to search their apartment, maybe that's reasonable. If they use that warrant to search every apartment on my block, that's messed up. If they do that without leaving a trace, so I have no idea when or if it has happened ... then I'm living in a panopticon.
they'll just do a parallel construction - use stingrays to find other evidence, scrap stingrays from record and only go forward with evidence gathered from usage of stingray.
That doesn’t mean that they don’t pose a threat though.
Big adtech have insane amounts of data and deep pockets but realistically no means to carry out the above, however that doesn't mean big adtech should get a pass.
Police having the ability to spy on everyone with little to no oversight is nightmarish authoritarianism, it's completely against the spirit of American democracy, not to mention in violation of The Constitution.