Stingrays and Privacy

In the early 2000's a young man by the name of Daniel Rigmaiden was using deceased people's credentials to file fraudulent tax returns. He would use the cash to live out in the wild with enough food and drinks for long periods of time. In order to do this though he would enter hotel rooms and use an air card to gain access to cell towers to file the returns. This led on for awhile until he was caught by the FBI and local police.

How did they know who he was and where he was? The method he was using to commit the crimes kept his identity hidden as well as his whereabouts. The technology used wasn't very well understood at the time, but police agencies as well as FBI agents were using Stingray devices.  They would only need to track the model number for the card and see the general location and after going there the device will play a game of Marco Polo until it pinpoints the device. Stingray sends out a ping that tricks devices to sending back a response which also provides whoever is using the stingray with anyone's information in the area without them knowing.

While in prison Daniel thought about  how they were able to figure out what he was doing and his whereabouts. He felt  due to the circumstances it was probably something to do with his device and the cell tower he connected to, but at the time there wasn't enough known or documented on use of wireless sniffers. So he began to search through thousands of documents to find the answer all while in prison without internet access.

He came across the devices being tested by law enforcement and government officials.  Turns out many places across the United States were using them to track which is an invasion of privacy. This normally would require a warrant to be able to do but with the lack of knowledge and such broad terms being used in court things were happening without courts knowing the actual meaning.

It is still happening to this day, but now we have other ways of tracking without general mass knowing and it takes years before whistle blowers reveal these things and to have laws put in place to protect us. I personally believe this cannot continue without things becoming worse. It's unconstitutional and a huge invasion of privacy... I understand you want to keep things safe, but if you resort to these things you cannot be trusted and should not hold any position that grants access to unlawful acts. A better approach would be to be more open with how you're doing these things  and ask the public to give consent to help with an investigation.

I believe manufacturers for everyday devices used by consumers should make these things more difficult for even government officials to crack and force them to use words in court to indicate their actions more clearly.