While new technologies—the Internet, cell phones, email, Facebook, twitter, blogs—help people communicate and fight the state by shedding light on the state’s practices, the state will of course also try, where it can, to use technology to oppress. As reported in a recent Wall Street Journal article, Stingray phone tracker fueling constitutional clash (discussed in a recent episode of Tech News Today), the feds are using a “little known cellphone-tracking device—a stingray”—to track the the location of cell phone users, even when the phone is not in use. As the WSJ piece explains:
A stingray works by mimicking a cellphone tower, getting a phone to connect to it and measuring signals from the phone. It lets the stingray operator “ping,” or send a signal to, a phone and locate it as long as it is powered on, according to documents reviewed by the Journal. The device has various uses, including helping police locate suspects and aiding search-and-rescue teams in finding people lost in remote areas or buried in rubble after an accident.
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