A Stingray Operation

in different episodes in the past. That's correct, different episodes of tech stuff, some of the same episodes of stuff they don't want you to know, though, Yes, yes, there is a little bit of overlap for that. But we were super excited to hear about today's topic because it's been something that Matt and I have been talking about off air. Is that correct? Absolutely, This kind of technology that we're going to get into a little later. Uh,

it piques our interest, you could say, yeah, mine as well. Uh, you know, the stuff they don't want you to know shows great show. If you guys haven't checked it out, you need to go and and check it out. Check check out how you guys are looking into various types of conspiracies, things that are happening below the surface level that people may not be aware of, and kind of sifting through the information to show which parts of it are you know, are really solid. You know, these are

the things that we know for sure. And here's the conjecture that's been said about it. You guys do a great job with it. And as it turns out, there's a lot of stuff out there that can really fuel that kind of kind of talk for good reason. And I typically am one of those more you know, I am a little are conservative and skeptical with my approach

to these things. But this is a technology we're gonna talk about today that I don't know how you could go to it being skeptical and say, oh, everything is fine. We are talking about sting ray or I AM s I catchers, and so stingray is the one that I think most people have heard about. That's the one that was brought up in a lawsuit in Arizona, UM. So I think that that is what most people think about when they hear I M. S I catchers, if they

are aware of that term at all. But of course sting stingray is just one version of that, and we'll talk about some of the other ones as well. So I am s I catchers stands for International Mobile Subscriber Identity catchers or locators, and that is a fancy way of saying. This is a technology that is able to intercept signals from cell phones, ostensibly so that uh a law enforcement official could locate a person based upon that

person's cell phone signaling. And it does this, and we'll talk about specifics in a bit, by mimicking a cell phone tower. So in other words, your cell phone is communicating with this device thinking that this is the actual part of the infrastructure that it would normally operate inside. Yeah. Yeah, it's sort of the same way that were similar at least to the ways in which some animals have evolved to have camouflage that makes them appear to be a

different type of creature, right. Yeah. And one thing that I just want to get this out so I don't uh moan and complain about it for the whole episode. If you ever lost a cell phone or had one stolen and had the sneaking suspicion that there might be a way for law enforcement to catch it, well, far radically,

there is. It's just it's just they can't do that for everybody because so many people lose their cell phones or have them stolen, you know, as long as it's turned on right, right, yeah, and as long as well, and it also depends on a couple of other things too, Right, they have to have the if they're looking for your cell phones specifically, they kind of need to know a little bit more information, like they need to know something specific about that phone or to identify it versus all

the other phones that will connect to it, right, right, because otherwise they just be like, well, it may be one of the phones here, and there are different ways of looking into that, right. It all depends on what the investigation is. And we'll we'll talk more about how it's used in investigations. So basically, this is a technology meant to help Again, ostensibly law enforcement tracked down the bad guys or counter terrorism officials to identify potential terrorist

threats before they become a reality. That's what it supposed to be used for. There are a lot of people who have objected to it because it is it is taking a very wide approach to targeting something very specific, and that can be dangerous for the sting Ray its self. It costs between sixty eight thousand dollars and a hundred thirty five thousand dollars last I checked. Because there are two different models of the sting ray, there's the sting ray and sting Ray. To sting Ray two came out

a few years ago. The sting ray obviously came out before that. Because we move in a chronological order, they haven't gotten to that quantum effect where the sequel comes out before the original. Um. Now it's made by a company called Harris Corporation out of Melbourne, Florida, and uh and this company makes a lot of technology that falls into this general category. Some of the products that they make are similar to sting Ray and do similar things

to that device. Others are more specific and are meant to be used in conjunction with a gadget like stingray. Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's like a console, you know, like you've got your connect, you've got your you know, your your dance pad, You've got all these other things sort of the similar thing here, except the devices that Harris Corporation makes, some of them boost the signal catching ability of the basic technology, like the stingray some of them allow for

better tracking technology. It all depends on the thing. But but you know, you may have heard some of the other names. Some of the other names that include trigger fish, kingfish, amberjack, gossamer, harpoon, and hail storm. Uh. And not only these are not types of stingray. These are all individual devices that work in a similar way to sting ray. Some of them copy the functionality of stingray, some of them go beyond that.

In fact, trigger fish is particularly troubling. Um. But uh, sting rate self can be really troubling too, if you just do a simple upgrade to it. And then you're right. The all of these have things in common and that they all are meant to detect cell phone usage in some way and either identify it or locate it and or track it. Um. And it's how you use these in combination with one another that determines your ability to do that. Now, clearly we're talking about something that's mimicking

a cell phone tower. You have to have it be mobile because otherwise you just have to hope that the bad guys happened to go across your part of town. You can't take it to them if it's not mobile right. So uh. One of the things that this is really helpful for as far as law enforcement are concerned, is that they can go to a part of town where

they suspect someone is. They can put out their ears, listen for it, look to see if they have any hits that relate back to the target they're specifically looking for, and if not, they can move on to a different part of town. Um. That's also one of the drawbacks, as it turns out, at least from from the perspective of some people. Now let's see one other thing. Oh, I forgot to mention. Gossamer is one of the exceptions to this. Gossamer is not about tracking or locating cell phone. Yeah,

but this is the one that freaks me out the most. Yeah, this is not passive. Now, Gossamer is about denial of service attacks on a mobile phone. So it's about it's essentially a jammer. Now, this is great for all of the paranoid people in the audience. Are you getting bad reception or are you being gossamer? I actually, and and

another thing to to mention. I didn't put it in our notes, but one of the things these devices typically can do, the stingray in particular, can do this is it can boost your the signal coming from your phone to connect to the tower. It can essentially say I need a stronger signal your phone. Then, even though you're not using it, like it's just in your pocket, there's no vibrating, there's no ringing, there's nothing going on, your

phone starts sending stronger signals. This drains your battery. So if you're the paranoid persuasion, you may also think my phone's battery just won't even last like a full day anymore. And it might not be because your phone is old. It might be because you're getting you're getting sting rayed. You guys, I'm not kidding. That's happening to me right now. Well, I'm sorry, Matt, but you should take more care when

you are browsing on your phone. Also, Matt, Matt, I mean not to make you worried or anything, but you're definitely on some lists. So I mean you're on our list of favorite people. Yeah, there's one right there. So okay, So I love this idea about it being mobile. So if we take that paranoid example, uh, in the vast majority, virtually every time somebody has poor reception or poor battery life.

It is never going to be something like this, But there is a very small chance that if you are a victim of this, you could literally have someone following you around, right, yeah, I mean, okay, to be fair, this technology we're talking about is at a level of expense where it's not likely to happen to you. And if you are someone who is either hanging out with questionable people or you yourself are engaged in some questionable activities,

then you'd be more likely to have this actually target you. Now, because we know that law enforcement agencies across the United States and in other parts of the world have used this kind of technology, they're the they're the customers, they're ones that are purchasing the stuff from Harris Corporation. It's very possible you would come into contact with this, and it's not that you are being targeted, but you're still being affected because it's so broad. Yeah, it's like it's

mimicking a cellphone tower. It's not mimicking a cell phone tower for a single phone. It's been making a cell phone tower for the broadcast range of that device. And so okay, so their mobile but what what would they look like if you just saw one. So they look kind of like, uh, I mean, if you've ever seen one of those servers, like it looks like just a basic computer with lots of ports on it. It's kind

of like that. It's usually a little bit uh, stumpy looking, like it's not as wide as your typical server is. It's a little more narrow a little tall. But it's meant to fit into racks because you can, you know,

end up pairing these with other technologies. But it's essentially a computer and you hook it up to a laptop, so you've got really the basic parts you have are the antenna, which is important because obviously it has to receive signals sent from cell phones um and a transmitter so that you can send stuff back through if you

need to. You've got the computer itself, which is processing the signals and identifying where those signals are coming from, both what type of phone it is by you know, giving you the identification numbers of that phone, the phone number that's associated with that phone, and the location of that phone based upon some triangulation. You might actually have to physically move the technology around to get the triangulation.

You could theoretically communicate with another cell phone tower, and by getting comparing numbers, you know you know you can generally tell the direction from which the signal comes and its strength. That gives you an idea of it's it's general location in that like you know roughly what distance

it is from your your base station. So it's one of those things where if the signal gets stronger, it's closer to you, right, and if it's if it's if the signal, if the cell phone signal is getting weaker than you know that the target cell phone is moving away. If you were to move the van to a second location and do those measure a mints, then because you have the two points on a on one part of a triangle, the cell phones the third point, then you

know where the person is. It's the same way that cell phone towers are able to give an approximation of where you are, even if your phone doesn't have GPS. Right, it's sending the signals and based upon the strength of the signal, how long it takes to get there, all of these sort of things, it can approximate where you are. Now.

By by approximate, I mean within a few you know, meters, So it's not like as as a specific as GPS can be, but it's still good enough for law enforcement to hone in on a on a particular location and people can sent to the use of GPS. But yeah, uh So there's a question that I'm sure a lot of people are wondering, which is this stuff sounds kind of space a g but how how new? Is it

not that new? Uh? The the information I found said that at least the giger Fish version of this technology has been in use since the late nineteen nineties, Like, uh yeah, And to keep keep in mind, like this technology has been in some form of development or another and been available to different types of agencies, specifically the FBI would be a big one. Um. And it's just that over the past few years it has become more common for local law enforcement to get their hands on this.

Before it was something that only you know, the federal law enforcement officials were able to access. But now we're

seeing local law enforcement. Not everybody's owning up to it, but we're seeing a lot of local law enforcement offices adopt this technology, and they're doing it in kind of a kind of a back door Shenanigan's way, I would say, yeah, so uh, you know, these things can be pretty expensive, and obviously law enforcement has a budget that they have to answer to, so some of them are funding the purchase of this material by filing it under counter terrorism

uh um strategies. Yeah. Essentially they say, we want to participate in this, you know, we want to make sure we help protect national security doing it on a local level. Uh. And then they get the federal grant to purchase this stuff. But then they're using it on a much broader scale. So it's not like they're not using it specifically for counter terrorism. They're using it in all sorts of cases.

There was a story about a sheriff whose own vehicle got broken into and uh and whose phone was stolen, who decided to use this stuff to try and ostensibly to try and stop the the string of car break ins. Some people would say that perhaps it was more personal than that, but the point being that this was not a counter terrorism issue. This was you know, someone breaking and entering into cars, which is you know, that's that's

a crime. But you people have been arguing, like what at what level of crime do you consider the use of this particular type of technology necessary to employ? Yeah, especially given the expense not just in financial terms, but in terms of manpower or time. So that's that's one problem, but it's my spider sense is telling me that you have a bigger problem. I've got so many problems with this, So let's let's talk about how it works first, because this is this is what leads into where the biggest

problems that I have where the technology come from. So uh, to understand how this works, you've got to know how cell phone works, all right, And we're gonna be super high level here because I could do a full episode on how cell phones work, and you guys would be stabbing me because you're wondering why I've pulled you in UM. But typically the easiest way of explaining it as cell phones broadcast over radio frequencies, and you have cell phone

towers that present a broadcast area. The towers are able to accept the incoming signals from a cell phone and outgoing signals that are going to cell phones within that UM service area. They're doing so over specific frequency to the phones. Your phone knows which frequency quote unquote knows which frequency to be in because there's a master control system that's telling the phone tune into this frequency so

that you can receive and transmit information. Technically you're using too frequencies so you can receive and transmit at the same time. Then as you leave one cell phone service area and you're starting to get closer to another, then you have to be handed off right because if if not, once you move too far away from the base station, you would no longer have service. So this is similar to when you move into an area that doesn't have

the towers that support the service you use. So if you're like an a T and T customer and you go into an area that's not supported by a T and T, then you're out of luck. Your phone becomes a brick, right, or whatever's on your phone, that's all you can use. So you have to have this handoff technology for one tower to hand off the the service

to another tower as you're moving between them. So what's happening is your phone is constantly sending little signals even when it's not directly in use to to say here I am. It's essentially saying I'm here almost yeah, it's exactly like paying a server. It's doing this about every seven to fifteen seconds. So this is why even if you don't use your phone, the battery life gradually decreases.

So the reason it does this is very important because if it didn't tell the cell phone towers, hey here I am, you would never get texts or cell phone or you never get a call. You couldn't you just play solitaire or whatever. Yeah, because because the system wouldn't know where your phone is, so it wouldn't be able to send the signal like it doesn't when someone dials

your number. It doesn't magically connect to your phone. The system has to be aware of where you are, and it has this constant game of Marco Polo to ensure that there's this seamless transition. Right because you as a person, you are mobile, so you can move from location to location. You are not always going to be next to the same cell phone tower all the time. So your phone has to constantly, like every seven to fifteen seconds, say

I'm here. Because if you're in a car and you're traveling down the road, you're moving in and out of different you know, cell tower ranges, so the different cell towers have to be aware of where your phone is so that you can continue to receive messages, phone calls. That kind of stuff or make them. Yeah, the problem is that because of this technology, you know that this is what makes cell phones useful, but because of that

same technology, it's also what makes this sting ray technology possible. So, because your phone is sending out these messages and your phone doesn't know where the next cell phone tower is, it's podcasting these little messages and the cell phone towers pick it up. Based upon the signal strength, the cell phone tower knows if you are moving toward it or moving away from it. The sting ray ends up mimicking the cell phone towers. So your little cell phone sends

out a message and the stingray picks it up. Sting ray now knows where your phone is, or at least knows that your phone is in that area. As the signal gets stronger, the stingray knows that your phone is getting closer to it. If you have triangulated this, then it knows where you are. Or if you have one of the other devices that pair with the sting ray that can help track and locate, the sting ray knows

where you are. There's a laptop that you would connect to this device that would give you the redoubt that would be useful for a human being because right now we're talking all about technology that and data that machines could use, but it's not useful to us because we wouldn't be able to see it. But the laptop expresses that in ways that make it possible for you to see.

Maybe with mapping software, it's plotting the location against a map, as well as identification of the phone numbers UM and the I D number that's unique to that particular mobile phone. So the issue here is that this this sting ray, well accept all of those incoming messages, all those Yeah, anything that's within the area that that the sensitivity of that antenna, it will pick that up. So is it like,

is it just metadata? Well yes, originally, first it's just, first of all, just metadata, just metadata, because metadata you don't need very much of it to start making some very scary conclusions. You can start to really narrow down who a person is based upon some metadata routines what they do in the real world and when they do it, the phone numbers they might be in contact with at that time. The phone number of the device itself obviously would be very important. So let's say that you two

YouTube and Ben you are you are. You are the cops. Okay, okay, you're in your van power Yeah, I know, it's not go crazy. You do not have a tank. We're not We're not in Swanny. Was Swanny? Wasn't it? I was thinking Swanny? By the way, listeners, is is just to the northeast of Atlanta. It's a little part of Metro Atlanta area. Um and they have a tank. So anyway, you are in a van. You have heard about tanks, but you do not currently own one. You've got plenty

of donuts to get you through the day. By the way, if you are in law enforcement, and I am offending you, dear listeners, I'm merely poking fun. I love you guys at any rate. So you guys are are looking at the incoming messages that are being hit. We're on our laptop. You are looking specifically for a phone number associated with a suspect, a person of interest. You want to be able to track this person down, but so far have

been unable to do so. You have heard that this person may in fact be in this particular part of town, which is why you have parked your van, And all you are doing is looking for a hit of that particular number as it moves through, and once you do, you then try to triangulate, you locate, and then your your send people out there to talk to this suspect or person of interest. Now that that alone, that sounds

like that's okay. I mean, there might be some problems we have here, but you're specifically looking for the hit. You're not looking at the massive amount of information that's coming in. You're looking for something specific. Yeah, now, Matt, I know that, I know that, dude, I know, I know it's the pencil pushers who really are to blame. Don't don't, don't bust my chops um so at any rate. Yeah, in this case, you are specifically looking for a particular

phone number. It's a little more tricky if you don't know the number though, right Like now you're looking for patterns. Now you're looking specifically for activities that match what you suspect your target is already doing. You're also possibly looking to find out what phone numbers are being used in

an area. Now, this is where it really gets tricky because some of these devices, not all of them, but the sting ray and the trigger fish included both can tell you if someone makes a call from within that area that the sting ray covers, you can see what number they called. Now now, at least with the basic sting ray, you can't listen in on the call. You just know the time, the UH number, and the duration

of the call. Hold on. Sounds like we're getting to a point where we can listen to these calls the basic sting Yeah, okay, So remember when I said you can upgrade. So sting ray is it's a computer, is what it boils down to. I mean, it's more than a computer, but it has elements of a computer. It runs software. There is software that you can install on the sting ray that does allow you to listen in uh. There is fish Hawk, which is software that allows you

to eavesdrop upon conversations. And there's also Porpoise. You might have noticed a theme I was gonna ask you about that they're in Florida. I guess that makes sense. But anyway, so the porpoise allows you to uh see texts that are sent through here. So it's again it's messages or phone calls that are sent from the phone out through

the the sting ray that go on. Now, this obviously raises a lot of very tricky questions, particularly when it comes to basic rights, because if you are just taking in everything and you can potentially read all the text messages or listening on any of the conversations that are going through and remember this is just based on geography. You know, you're not targeting, you're getting everything. There's no

probable cause, there's no probable cause, there's no warrant. So back back in our scenario, Ben and I in our readout, Well, okay, I'm driving, so Ben, you're alright, so you're the wheel man, get it so you can see. Then we'll be able to see all of this on a readout a Mett Look look at his number. It's been going back and forth in these two cell phone towers every freaking Thursday. Yeah.

Or it could be Ben saying, hey, Matt, look this dufus over here thinks his girlfriend's gonna make him dinner tonight, and we already know she ain't gonna do that, right buddy, You guys are so good. Later of this comes out,

so I'll just be stopped on the street. Uh that's funny until it happened, alright, So at any rate, Uh yeah, yeah, I mean technically, if you have the right technology, right being the the appropriate one for this, uh, and you have the correct software on it, then you could be you could start filtering through you could potentially read anything that's coming through that that stingray device. So again, it would be any phone that was within that range of

the antenna. Um you wouldn't necessarily I mean you probably wouldn't be storing at all. I mean you could if you had a large enough hard drive. That would be another thing you would need to have in your array

of technology piling up very quickly. Yeah, and and so this is starting to sound probably very similar to the discussions we've had about the n s A. You know, the fact that they have been collecting cell phone data at the they're doing it at the provider level, right like they're there, they've got their years on this national or even global level, whereas we're really talking about very regional effects here. Yes, still very concerning. So how much

how much information can it actually capture? Um? Well, you know it's here all right. Here's the thing. We don't know the full extent of what it can capture because secrets have to be kept for your safety from the creators of stingray or from the police departments. In the law enforcement, I'm just gonna say yes from both. So there was a story recently. I think it was I want to say it was Santa Clarat, California, but I

could be wrong. It was a It was a town in California, however, that recently declined to purchase from Harris Corporation because they said there were agreements that they would have been forced to enter into that would prevent them from releasing any information about the product, even in the face of a Freedom of Information Act request. So an ironclad yes like a nondisclosure agreement to trump all nondisclosure.

How the heck do you get around You mostly just drag your heels as long as possible and hope that the judge that ends up hearing any case about it is not savvy enough to understand the implications of this technology. You can appeal for national security I think right, well, that's essentially what they say is that if we were to tell you what the capabilities of this technology were, then the bad guys would be able to work around it, thus making the technology useless and we'd only be getting

your boring text messages instead of the bad guys stuff. Well, it's okay, just to play the advocate here, that kind of reasoning, which is incredibly slippery and dangerous, It does make sense if you think again about the ostensible purpose, right, the the idea that this stuff could be rendered useless if it wasn't a secret. But also, I'm just gonna say the word I'm going to say is convenient. It's

a convenient reason. Well, and it's it's yeah, when you have like a rubber stamp that's a secret, then how do you have oversight? How can you make certain that the figures that have been put into authority positions in order to help the citizens, how can you make sure that they are doing that that duty that they've been they've been tasked with, as opposed to abusing it or misusing it, maybe not even abusing it on purpose, but perhaps through you know, no no maliciousness, have been using

it incorrectly. And there have been arguments that judges have allowed this kind of technology to be used because the explanations they were given about what the technology did were purposefully vague and limited, so that they would not know the full extent of what this technology does. So, in other words, here's where we're going to kind of transition into more of the policy stuff, because you know, that's really why I got you guys to come on here.

The technology we've kind of covered, you know, the very basic ideas that it's a man in the middle kind of attack. The reason why I brought you on here is because this is my own personal perspective, my own opinion. But my opinion is that this technology is dangerously close, if not identical, to the concept of issuing a general warrant, which is precisely what the Fourth Amendment was supposed to

protect us from. So the idea being that here in the units dates by the way, this technology is being used in other places. In fact, one of the reasons that I brought it up is because recently Sky News was reporting about how it's being used in the UK. Uh. It had been thought to have been used in the UK for a while, but now there's kind of essentially ironclad evidence that yes, it's being used as the UK. Yeah.

So the reason why, uh, you know, I brought you guys in as this this idea of one of the founding principles of the United States of America was that the colonists didn't they weren't so crazy about the British coming up and going into every single house looking for a specific person, with no reason to suspect that the person of interest was actually in the houses they were stopping. It's just a general blanket search, right, So search and seizure,

the idea being that we're looking for this person. This person is is bad and so you have no rights until we find this person. So we're gonna go to your house and turn it upside down looking for this person. If they're not there, too, well, okay, well good for you, too bad for us. We're gonna go do it to

the next family. Ah. Yeah. So this approach of using a device to pull in all incoming data, even if you're looking for a really bad person, you're getting everything, and it doesn't seem that different to me than the approach of there's this bad person out there, we're going to go through everybody's house until we find that person. So for me, there're a couple of things you have to establish. One of them is does that data that

you're sending out belong to you? Is it really yours or you know, is it the companies that you're using just to ostensibly send the information to a cell tower

to another person. Um. And then for me, if you look at things like when the Boston bombing occurred, and then the search for the Sarnive brothers afterwards, and when the police were going through and essentially doing what you're saying, searching through, how is yeah, with just it's not really a general warrant, but something kind of similar to that where yeah, I mean they didn't have a they didn't have a warrant for each specific house they went through,

which they're supposed to if if I mean, your rights as a citizen are supposed to say, listen, if you don't have a warrant, you cannot come into my house. That is a constitutional right guaranteed to me. Yeah, it's the old, the old ticking time bomb reasoning, which I

find fairly disingenuous. Uh. When the idea we heard it before, with the idea of using torture to obtain some sort of confession or insider information, where people would say, well, torture is not ordinarily allowed, but if there is a bomb that is going to go off in a set amount of time, and we have one person who knows the information in custody, then shouldn't we torture somebody to

save a hundred people or whatever the number is. And this what what's similar to me about this is that this encounter is um so many ways to bend rules that are that exists for a reason, as you said, and it doesn't really provide a way to bend those rules back to their original shape. I mean, Jonathan, I can think of already, uh, several scenarios wherein this gild

get sticky very quickly. Matt. I love that you mentioned. Uh. It might not be the person actually using the phone, right, It might be someone else, uh took a phone right and used it as a burner. But the person, the innocent person whose name is uh tied to that number that I d they're going to be automatically suspect number one or maybe even public enemy number one. Another question is what if? What if this search? Right? So let's go back in, Um, Matt, you and I are still cops, Jonathan,

your FBI, your special investigator. Right you came in, you said, I'm taking over this investigation. I got a little flip phone because I'm from the later seasons of X Files. Right exactly right, black suit, black tie, whole thing, and you say that we are looking for you know, insert

bad guy's name here. Uh. And while we're looking though, however, uh, there are our search, our vacuum cleaner approach brings in another number that pings on your radar because you were already suspicious of one person doing, you know, a federal level crime. So this person who we were not looking for, just showed up. What happens then, Uh, well, I mean,

obviously I got to take over the investigation. I've seen a lot of episodes of various crime dramas, and that's what the That's the only thing the FBI is around to do is to push the local police force out of this was well, you have to keep putting your sunglasses on and taking them off. Occasionally you just hear the who, Well, I've got a are you kind of

like that? Unless you want to answer no, no, I The only answer to that I have is that I would imagine that at least until there are some strong precedents set in in court about the actual use of this technology, what it really can do, and whether or not it truly is constitutional to use it in the way that it's being used, I would imagine at least until that happens, the FBI acts on that act on that information because if there if no one has come out and said you can't do that, they're going to

do that. And I don't mean to cast aspersions on law enforcement in the FBI. I realized that they have incredibly difficult and very high stakes jobs, right and in order for them to be able to do those jobs in an increasingly complex technological world, there are some very tough questions we have to answer. But the problem I have is that these are questions that that seem to

already have been answered in the past. We just haven't applied the answer yet, or people judges in particular, haven't understood the implications of this technology, and that we're seeing some civil liberties fade away as a result or get less, you know, like like it's like you are protected against this, except in all of these other newer situations, many of which we cannot legally tell you about because national security, right, because if we told you about how we're violating your

civil liberties, then the bad guys would win. Like, well, technically, if you're telling me that my civil liberties are being violated, but you can't tell me how the bad guys have one. Yeah, it's it's an interesting deliminate is one that we keep running into. And this is not the first time. I love that you mentioned there's precedent through about this throughout history. I mean back when it was just the post office,

right uh. There there were still these ongoing debates about what kind of right to privacy should someone expect when they're using the postal system. But you also mentioned advocacy groups, So is there some organized opposition to There's quite quite a lot. There's a lot of disorganized opposition too. But the organized opposition includes like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the f E F f UH, there's the American Civil Liberties Union,

the a c l u uh, there's EPIC there. There are all these different groups that are all about privacy and civil rights that have identified problem areas with this technology, some of which have been they've kind of some of them have couched their arguments, largely because they say, we can't come out and say how strongly strongly we feel about this because of the secrecy involved. Without knowing everything,

we we don't want to suspect the worst. But we can't discount it either because you won't tell us what it does or how it's being used. Um, you know, but there there are a lot who are saying you need to have rules set in place on how this technology can be used, if in fact it is legal

to use it at all. So, for example, perhaps before you use this you have to secure a warrant that specifies who you are looking for and and narrows that down to a point where you can't just throw out a net and everybody who's caught in the net, their lives are turned upside down for the duration of you sorting out which person is the one you actually are interested in. But they'll never know the collateral damage isn't really collateral if they have no idea, Well, they might

not ever know. And you know, you could argue that in a world where you never know that this is

happening and it's never affecting you. Stick with me. If you're in a world where you you don't know that's happening to you and it's not having any noticeable effect on your life, ultimately you might be able to go to sleep at night and think, well, it doesn't really matter, because if it is not affecting my life, then I mean, I don't want it to happen, and I'm still going to protest it happening because I don't think it's right.

But if it doesn't have a noticeable effect on my life at the end of the day, when I draw my last breath, it hasn't really made a difference. Who cares. But we might also live in a world where sometimes it does affect us, even if we are perfectly innocent in all in the eyes of the law. Let's just throw out some examples of the n S A for for instance, like a person who decides to use the n S as wide array of of surveillance techniques to look in on an ex girlfriend. That's exactly the scenario

I was going to bring up. If you and I back in our scenario, I decided to go back and use the machine for a little bit because we parked to get some coffee or something, and I see a number that I recognize pop up. Yeah, and I'm just like, oh, what is my ex wife's new husband talking about? Oh, and then blah blah blah blah blah. There you go

down the rabbit hole into weird personal things. Then, and this is the thing, it's it's you know, the technology allows that to happen, and humans being human are going to do it right. Like it's it's not a question of whether the technology itself is good or bad because it's a tool. Uh, you might say, is it a tool that is appropriate? Is there any is there are there appropriate use cases for this tool? And if so, how are they defined? I think that's the important step.

We have to come to the conclusion of does this tool make sense? If so, in which contexts does it make sense? And how can we be certain that in any given use case it fits those contexts? And if it if we can answer all those to our satisfaction, fine, I question whether that's possible particular technology. But but the problem is that people they'll behave outside of that, right. I mean, if there is the capability of someone to do this, you know, use this technology in a selfish,

possibly harmful way, for then someone will do it. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when and how frequently and uh, because we've seen it with the n s A. It's again, you know, you have to remember that at the end of the day, they're real human beings in charge of using this technology, and real human beings have real motivations that happen every single

day of their lives. Just like you and me. We we go through our lives and we realize, oh man, if only I knew what was going on in that person's head. Oh wait, I could figure it out because I've got access to this technology. It happens, right, it does.

One thing immediately that we could say that might be a glimmer of hope with this is that many of the surveillance technologies or proprietary systems rather do have strict usage logs where wherein you know, any user with an I D dis tract, So, uh, Lieutenant Frederick would be pinned up for they would say, hey, lieutenant, why were you running uh private in the police force? Have you militarized the entire police force for several years in the future.

He's not a rookie, he's a private all right. Well, anyhow, whatever your position would be, you know, there would be somebody over you, ideally who would say, hey, we noticed that you were searching this number which is not part of it, and you went pretty in depth. So so that's one thing. But then again it relies, as you said,

on the policy on the system. I'd like to take the danger even further because one of the most dangerous potential things about the n s A program and possibly Stingray and it's other accoutrement, is the idea that this could be used by corrupt people with access to the technology to do things like smear campaigns, to do blackmail,

or even extortion. And the most frightening thing to me, although it is it is offensive, the idea that an innocent person's uh terrible late night you up text messages might be collected and saved for posterity, it's more frightening that this could be used to curtail people who were fighting against it. Yeah, I mean, there's there's that possibilities. Well, I mean, granted this would a lot of that responsibility falls on the Harris Corporation and how they deal with

the orders. I imagine that they mostly, I mean before they were really working with the FBI and some military companies or military organizations I should say, um, and it was only relatively recently, in the last maybe five to ten years, that they started really working with the local

law enforcement agencies. UM. I don't know what there are other customers are like or who they are, but you could presumably I mean even if even if it's not made by Harris Corporation, because it's out there and because people know about it, then that's enough for someone to say, hey, let's pour some money into making one of these of our own so we can spy on people in the CIA, or the CIA might say let's use it so we can spy on people in other countries. I mean, it's

definitely a difficult, difficult subject. It's tricky, uh. I mean, obviously spying throughout history has all been about let's find out what they know without letting them know. We know. At some point you're like, well, if we if we assume that the premise that spies are necessary is true, then these other technologies need to exist for us to be able to do that. Yeah, but maybe maybe you would argue that spying is not something that should happen

in the first place. Okay, this this is something that I know we really wanted your opinion on. Okay for a while, so have we? And we asked Alex Winter the same question. Is a filmmaker made the Deep Web. Have we reached the point of no return with technology? Has technology rendered the concept of individual privacy obsolete? Or will it do. So, Okay, well this is super complicated, right, Sorry, I mean it's a great question. It's a great question.

On the one hand, you have stuff like this, the technology specifically meant to intercept and perhaps even uh not just not just intercept in the sense of finding out who is talking to whom, but what they are saying. Right, You've got that technology, that one thing, and you could argue that as long as that technology exists, then privacy might only be an illusion. It might be something you believe you have, but in reality, your information is being

collected somewhere. And of course we know that anything we post or call or text through or whatever, it's going through an infrastructure. So there is at least one entity out there that has the access to it. The question is whether anyone is looking at it or if it's just if it's just a conduit. Right, So you could argue that privacy is just an illusion in that case. There's another argument to make that has nothing to do

with surveillance. Facebook. Twitter, we are we are voluntarily sharing more and more of our lives, Instagram, Pinterest, really anything you can think of where you are allowed a platform. People are taking advantage of it. YouTube, another great example periscope.

So you're you're volunteering to share a lot more information and you don't necessarily think while you're doing it, this could potentially put other things in my life at risk of becoming public knowledge, whether it's because you're not paying enough attention or you just don't realize how much information

you are revealing every time you post something. Um So, you could argue in that case, privacy might also be an illusion, not because there are all these ways of staring at what's really going on, but because we're actually giving everything away and we're just not aware of it.

We're not aware of the consequences of what we our own actions happened to be um I would argue we haven't gone too far in the sense that we could, if motivated to do so and given the authority to do so, reverse a lot of the things that have

and happening. The question of whether that's a reality or not, I mean, that's kind of like the pie in the sky optimistic idealism, the idea that people could actually be motivated to take action, specifically through voting and through campaigning, and through bringing things to attention and getting the word out there and getting people behind the argument, Hey, we need to address this, and we need to have an addressed to our satisfaction, not just it's secret. You can't know.

I think it's possible, I think it would be really hard, and I don't even though I think it's possible, I don't think it's the plausible outcome. If I'm being perfectly honest, Um, it would require enormous changes in momentum among vast, huge entities out there that are bigger than any one person is.

So even if you let's say that you have an ideal candidate for president of the United States in mind, someone that you truly believe has the best interests of the citizens at heart and wants to protect constitutional rights. So they want to do right by the citizens and make sure that the things they do truly do protect them and do so in a way that follows the rules.

Even if that person exists and has put into the position of president, you still have everything else that from the local level to n s A TOI you know, organizations that do not directly answer to the president. It's not like the president is capable of changing everything by flicking a wand in fact, they're not supposed to be able to do that. That's why they have the position of president. Yeah. So uh, this is why until I

become benevolent dictator, we're going to have these problems. Yeah, you know, you've you've been saying that more and more often. I appreciate the posters that you've put up around the office. Uh they're they're a little bit stark. I don't know. I you know, I think there might be a bit too Soviet. Yeah. I mean, it would help if they were in English. But there's a lot of like crush this thing beneath the boot. I just like I thought the fist looked really like empowering and now I oh man,

it does. It does look good. It does. The style is nice. You're both on a list now, alright, so ut any rate? No, but this is this was the reason why why did you guys on here is because I know you guys. I assume you feel similarly to to what I've stated. But I mean, if there's if I have in any way misconstrued, I would I definitely want you to have the opportunity to address it. Well, I will let Ben finish this idea that I'm going to start. But when we spoke with Mr. Winter, he

had a surprisingly positive outlookture of privacy. That's wonderful, he did. The people that he's been speaking with and communicating with in his research on this subject of the deep web. He's finding that there are a lot of people who are freely focused on encrypting data and finding ways to encrypt almost all communication that is done from a private person's level, so that a company that is even handling

your data won't be able to decrypt it. Right. So, in other words, the the the company that handles it, it literally is just the conduit. It cannot it cannot see the content. At most, it will see where it's coming from and where it's going, but beyond that not

what the actual information is. He used the phrase. One phrase I remember that he used was a renaissance of privacy, which which I found inspiring because the the old argument of well, if you have nothing to worry about, worried about hiding, right, it's kind of silly when you consider that we do live in a world now where let's say, Jonathan, let's say that you as an FBI agent of the

part of town and so much. You said, you know what, guys, I'm gonna pull up my tent stakes from Langley, and I'm gonna come down here, and I am gonna I'm gonna live here, and a matter of fact, I'm gonna run for city commissioner because I think, uh, this kind of stuff needs to be dealt with in the public eye. And then all of a sudden, all of this stuff, every time you have used your phone in that region

got leaked by somebody. Or maybe you're running for sheriff, right, because we do know that the sheriff's uh, at least into Cab County once played played a corrupt game here, yeah, well, or or even just something that, like, you know, a mistake that you make at some point, sure, and it may be it may be one that you you know, it could be that something you consciously did, or not even a conscious mistake, something that due to your actions

has accidentally happened, and that you have already taken care of it, You have fixed whatever problems there are, whatever the nature of that thing is, you have you know, you've done your time. However that that might be for something like that to like, let's say that you do want to run for a local local position and it has no bearing whatsoever on your ability to carry out your duties. We live in a world now where that stuff comes back, I mean, like big time comes back.

And none of us are saints, you know, no one, no one has gone through life completely unsullied. Even if you you know or have the best of intentions, something has happened some point in your life. Maybe you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but that can be bad enough. Yeah, that's true. I I do want to say, Um, I really enjoyed I always enjoy being on this show, And um, I don't want to speak for you, Matt, but I'm I'm grateful that

hates it. Yeah, I'm grateful that for me. You guys, you would be so impressed by that's ability to silently weep in this room. But salty, salty beard. But the only thing I would add to what we were saying is that I love that we were talking about how we are not casting aspersion on the individuals working in law enforcement, which is so often an incredibly thankless job,

a fatally at times thankless job. And when you're when you are representing the good guys right, the force of the force of crime prevention in our society, then the thing is that the game you are playing is stacked against you because the bad guys, whomever they may be,

do not have to follow the same rules. So I while I think that, while I think that it's often easy, at least in our field, for people to demonize law enforcement as a faceless entity rather than a group of human beings, I do completely believe that this is horrible technology. I don't see a lot out of cases of it being successful. The a c l U has tried their best to make a map of all the police areas they're using this, but they still they had to say

that this map is incomplete. This is I believe, very very close to a kind of Pandora's box because, as we know, the price of technology continually decreases, right, Yeah, so what happens when it's a stingray is the price of a PS four? Well, I mean, you know, it's it's being made in such limited amounts. I mean, you have to have the demand there and you have to have I would imagine there will also be laws that will limit the use of this, because you have the

giant phone companies that will lobby very hard. They don't want the ability for someone to spoof a cell phone tower to fall into the hands of an average citizen that their their business depends upon that not happening. But you're not the average citizen. No, No, I'm the future benevolent dictator of the New World Order. I think you need a tank. I think the the you can need a tank on speed dial. Yeah, yeah, but they yeah, this is this is fantastic and I really appreciate the

opportunity to let more people know about this. Yeah, And like I said, this technology has been around for a while. In fact that the sting ray stuff really started hitting headlines a couple of years ago, back in that's when it was really starting to get noticed. And keep in mind it's been used more than a decade before that. So, uh, it's it's good to be aware of it. It's good

to ask these questions. And like I said, we may at some point come to a point where we are able to answer the questions I've been asking, to a point where maybe I would be like, Okay, I understand that in the world we live in, the reality of the world we live in that under these situations, this might be an acceptable use of the technology. Uh, it's just right now, we haven't. We don't have those answers because of secrecy. So yeah, it's it's it's definitely something

to be aware of. I I don't want to be a fearmonger or anything like that, but um, it is important that you know about it because I mean, it's it's out there. Whether you know or not, it is there, so it's better to know. All right, Well, guys, thank you so much for joining the show. Obviously you can find Matt and Ben's work at stuff they don't want you to know, a show that I titled that's true.

It's true, It's all true. You can also, ladies and gentlemen, find Jonathan on more than a few of our episodes. That's true as well. So much truth right now, you guys. Yeah, Yes, one thing before we go, I just want to recommend to everyone. This is a little something that I'm going to start doing today, in fact, because of this conversation. Go go down to your local magic shop by as much flash paper as you possibly can and do all of your communications solely on a flash paper and just

keep lots of lighters handy. Yeah, so essentially tell people you know, the message will not self destruct, but you will yourself will need to destroy the message once upon receiving it, and hower is yours. Yeah, and then all the all these problems are solved. I had a great time hanging out in that van with you, guys. Came out. It's pretty awesome. Guys. I'm sorry I took your case

away from you. It's okay, jerk move al right, guys. Well, if you have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, whether it is a subject or a guest I should have on the show, maybe someone I should interview, anything like that, or just a comment on what we had to say here today, send me a message. The email is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you can drop me a line on Twitter or Facebook or tumbler at all three. I use the handle of text Stuff H s W. And I'll talk to you

guys again really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houstock works dot com.