RSN: Barack Obama | My Eulogy for John Lewis

01 August 20

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01 August 20

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Barack Obama | My Eulogy for John Lewis

Barack Obama, The Atlantic
Excerpt: "James wrote to the believers, 'Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.'" 

“He, as much as anyone in our history, brought this country a little bit closer to our highest ideals.”

ormer President Barack Obama delivered a eulogy today honoring Representative John Lewis of Georgia, who died July 17 after a decades-long career in the House of Representatives. Lewis, a civil-rights icon who led the 1965 march in Selma, Alabama, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and spoke at the March on Washington, spent his congressional years advocating for voting rights and equality for Black Americans. Known as the moral “conscience” of the Congress, Lewis lay in state for two days in the Capitol this week.

Below, the full text of Obama’s remarks as delivered.

James wrote to the believers, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.” It is a great honor to be back in Ebenezer Baptist Church in the pulpit of its greatest pastor, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to pay my respects to perhaps his finest disciple. An American whose faith was tested again and again, to produce a man of pure joy and unbreakable perseverance: John Robert Lewis.

To those who have spoken, to Presidents Bush and Clinton, Madame Speaker, Reverend Warnock, Reverend King, John’s family, friends, his beloved staff, Mayor Bottoms, I’ve come here today because I, like so many Americans, owe a great debt to John Lewis and his forceful vision of freedom.

You know, this country is a constant work in progress. We’re born with instructions: to form a more perfect union. Explicit in those words is the idea that we’re imperfect. That what gives each new generation purpose is to take up the unfinished work of the last and carry it further than any might have thought possible. John Lewis, first of the Freedom Riders; head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; youngest speaker at the March on Washington; leader of the march from Selma to Montgomery; member of Congress, representing the people of this state and this district for 33 years; mentor to young people—including me at the time—until his final day on this Earth, he not only embraced that responsibility, but he made it his life’s work. Which isn’t bad for a boy from Troy.

John was born into modest means—that means he was poor. In the heart of the Jim Crow South to parents who picked somebody else’s cotton. Apparently he didn’t take to farm work. On days when he was supposed to help his brothers and sisters with their labor, he’d hide under the porch and make a break for the school bus when it showed up. His mother, Willie May Lewis, nurtured that curiosity in this shy, serious child. “Once you learn something,” she told her son, “once you get something inside your head, no one can take it away from you.” As a boy, John listened through the door after bedtime as his father’s friends complained about the Klan. One Sunday as a teenager, he heard Dr. King preach on the radio. As a college student in Tennessee, he signed up for Jim Lawson’s workshops on the tactic of nonviolent civil disobedience. John Lewis was getting something inside his head. An idea he couldn’t shake. It took hold of him. That nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience were the means to change laws but also change hearts and change minds and change nations and change the world.

So he helped organize the Nashville campaign in 1960. He and other young men and women sat at a segregated lunch counter, well dressed, straight back, refusing to let a milkshake poured on their heads or a cigarette extinguished on their backs or a foot aimed at their ribs—refuse to let that dent their dignity and their sense of purpose. And after a few months, the Nashville campaign achieved the first successful desegregation of public facilities of any major city in the South. John got a taste of jail for the first, second, third—well, several times. But he also got a taste of victory, and it consumed him with righteous purpose and he took the battle deeper into the South.

That same year, just weeks after the Supreme Court ruled that segregation of interstate bus facilities was unconstitutional, John and Bernard Lafayette bought two tickets, climbed aboard a Greyhound, sat up front, and refused to move. This was months before the first official Freedom Rides. He was doing a test. Trip was unsanctioned. Few knew what they were up to. And at every stop through the night, apparently, the angry driver stormed out of the bus and into the bus station. And John and Bernard had no idea what he might come back with. Or who he might come back with. Nobody was there to protect them. There were no camera crews to record events. We—you know, sometimes, Rev—we read about this and we kind of take it for granted. Or at least we, we act as if it was inevitable.

Imagine the courage of two people Malia’s age—younger than my oldest daughter. On their own. To challenge an entire infrastructure of oppression. John was only 20 years old. But he pushed all 20 of those years to the center of the table, betting everything, all of it, that his example could challenge centuries of convention and generations of brutal violence and countless daily indignities suffered by African Americans. Like John the Baptist preparing the way, like those Old Testament prophets speaking truth to kings.

John Lewis did not hesitate, and he kept on, getting onboard buses and sitting at lunch counters, got his mug shot taken again and again. Marched again and again on a mission to change America. Spoke to a quarter of a million people at the March on Washington when he was just 23. Helped organize the Freedom Summer in Mississippi when he was just 24. At the ripe old age of 25, John was asked to lead the march from Selma to Montgomery. He was warned that Governor Wallace had ordered troopers to use violence. But he and Hosea Williams and others led them across that bridge anyway. And we’ve all seen the film and the footage and the photographs. President Clinton mentioned the trench coat, the knapsack, the book to read, the apple to eat, the toothbrush. Apparently, jails weren’t big on such creature comforts. And you look at those pictures, and John looked so young and he’s small in stature. Looking every bit that shy, serious child that his mother had raised, and yet, he’s full of purpose. God put perseverance in him.

And we know what happened to the marchers that day. Their bones were cracked by billy clubs. Their eyes and lungs choked with tear gas. They knelt to pray, which made their heads easier targets. And John was struck in the skull. And he thought he was going to die, surrounded by the sight of young Americans gagging and bleeding and trampled. Victims in their own country of state-sponsored violence.

And the thing is, I imagine initially that day the troopers thought they’d won the battle. You can imagine the conversations they had afterwards. You can imagine them saying, “Yeah, we showed them.” They figured they’d turn the protesters back over the bridge. That they’d kept, they’d preserved a system that denied the basic humanity of their fellow citizens. Except this time there were some cameras there. This time the world saw what happened, bore witness to Black Americans, who were asking for nothing more than to be treated like other Americans, who were not asking for special treatment, just equal treatment, promised to them a century before, and almost another century before that. And when John woke up and checked himself out of the hospital, he would make sure the world saw a movement that was, in the words of scripture, “hard pressed on every side but not crushed. Perplexed, but not in despair. Persecuted but not Abandoned. Struck down but not destroyed.” They returned to Brown Chapel, a battered prophet, bandages around his head, and he said, “More marchers will come now.” And the people came. And the troopers parted. And the marchers reached Montgomery. And their words reached the White House. And Lyndon Johnson, son of the South, said, “We shall overcome.” And the Voting Rights Act was signed into law.

The life of John Lewis was, in so many ways, exceptional. It vindicated the faith in our founding. Redeemed that faith. That most American of ideas, the idea that any of us, ordinary people without rank or wealth or title or fame, can somehow point out the imperfections of this nation and come together and challenge the status quo. And decide that it is in our power to remake this country, that we love, until it more closely aligns with our highest ideals. What a radical idea. What a revolutionary notion. This idea that any of us ordinary people, a young kid from Troy, can stand up to the powers and principalities and say, “No, this isn’t right; this isn’t true; this isn’t just. We can do better.” On the battlefield of justice, Americans like John, Americans like Lowery and C. T. Vivian, two other patriots we lost this year, liberated all of us. That many Americans came to take for granted. America was built by people like them. America was built by John Lewises. He, as much as anyone in our history, brought this country a little bit closer to our highest ideals. And someday when we do finish that long journey towards freedom, when we do form a more perfect union, whether it’s years from now or decades, or even if it takes another two centuries, John Lewis will be a founding father of that fuller, fairer, better America.

And yet, as exceptional as John was, here’s the thing: John never believed that what he did was more than any citizen of this country can do. I mentioned in the statement the day John passed, the thing about John was how gentle and humble he was. And despite this storied, remarkable career, he treated everyone with kindness and respect because it was innate to him, this idea that any of us can do what he did—if we’re willing to persevere. He believed that in all of us there exists the capacity for great courage. That in all of us, there’s a longing to do what’s right. That in all of us there’s a willingness to love all people, and extend to them their God-given rights. So many of us lose that sense. It’s taught out of us. We start feeling as if, in fact, we can’t afford to extend kindness or decency to other people. That we’re better off if we’re above other people and looking down on them, and so often that’s encouraged in our culture. But John always said he always saw the best in us, and he never gave up and never stopped speaking out because he saw the best in us. He believed in us even when we didn’t believe in ourselves.

And as a congressman, he didn’t rest. He kept getting himself arrested. As an old man, he didn’t sit out any fight, sat in all night long on the floor of the United States Capitol. I know his staff was stressed. But the testing of his faith produced perseverance. He knew that the march is not over. That the race is not yet won. That we have not yet reached that blessed destination, where we are judged by the content of our character. He knew from his own life that progress is fragile, that we have to be vigilant against the darker currents of this country’s history. Of our own history. Where there are whirlpools of violence and hatred and despair that can always rise again. Bull Connor may be gone, but today we witness with our own eyes, police officers kneeling on the necks of Black Americans. George Wallace may be gone, but we can witness our federal government sending agents to use tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators.

We may no longer have to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar in order to cast a ballot, but even as we sit here, there are those in power who are doing their darnedest to discourage people from voting by closing polling locations and targeting minorities and students with restrictive ID laws and attacking our voting rights with surgical precision, even undermining the Postal Service in the run-up to an election that’s going to be dependent on mail-in ballots so people don’t get sick.

I know this is a celebration of John’s life. There are some who might say we shouldn’t dwell on such things. But that’s why I’m talking about it. John Lewis devoted his time on this Earth fighting the very attacks on democracy and what’s best in America that we’re seeing circulate right now. He knew that every single one of us has a God-given power and that the faith of this democracy depends on how we use it. That democracy isn’t automatic. It has to be nurtured. It has to be tended to. We have to work at it. It’s hard. And so he knew that it depends on whether we summoned a measure, just a measure of John’s moral courage, to question what’s right and what’s wrong. And call things as they are. He said that as long as he had a breath in his body, he would do everything he could to preserve this democracy, and as long as we have breath in our bodies, we had to continue his cause.

If we want our children to grow up in a democracy, not just with elections, but a true democracy, a representative democracy, and a big-hearted tolerant, vibrant, inclusive America of perpetual self-creation, then we’re going to have to be more like John. We don’t have to do all the things he had to do, because he did them for us. But we got to do something. As the Lord instructed Paul, “Do not be afraid. Go on speaketh. Do not be silent. For I am with you and no one will attack you to harm you for I have many in this city who are my people.” It’s just, everybody’s got to come out and vote. We got all those people in the city, but they can’t do nothing. Like John, we’ve got to keep getting into that good trouble. He knew that nonviolent protest is patriotic, a way to raise public awareness and put a spotlight on injustice and make the powers that be uncomfortable. Like John, we don’t have to choose between protests and politics. It’s not an either/or situation. It’s a both/and situation. We have to engage in protests where that’s effective, but we also have to translate our passion and our causes into laws. Institutional practices. That’s why John ran for Congress 34 years ago. Like John, we’ve got to fight even harder for the most powerful tool that we have, which is the right to vote.

The Voting Rights Act is one of the crowning achievements of our democracy. It’s why John crossed that bridge, why he spilled that blood. And by the way, it was the result of Democrat and Republican efforts. President Bush, who spoke here earlier, and his father, signed its renewal when they were in office. President Clinton didn’t have to because it was the law when he arrived. So instead, he made a law to make it easier for people to register to vote. But once the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act, some state legislators unleashed a flood of laws designed specifically to make voting harder, especially, by the way, state legislators where there’s a lot of minority turnout and population growth. That’s not necessarily a mystery or an accident. It was an attack on what John fought for. It was an attack on our democratic freedoms, and we should treat it as such. If politicians want to honor John, and I’m so grateful for the legacy and work of all the congressional leaders who are here, but there’s a better way than a statement calling him a hero. You want to honor John? Let’s honor him by revitalizing the law that he was willing to die for. And by the way, naming the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, that is a fine tribute. But John wouldn’t want us to stop there. Just trying to get back to where we already were.

Once we pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, we should keep marching to make it even better by making sure every American is automatically registered to vote, including former inmates who’ve earned their second chance. By adding polling places and expanding early voting and making Election Day a national holiday, so if you are somebody who’s working in a factory or you’re a single mom, who’s got to go to her job and doesn’t get time off, you can still cast your ballot. By guaranteeing that every American citizen has equal representation in our government, including the American citizens who live in Washington, D.C., and in Puerto Rico. They’re Americans. By ending some of the partisan gerrymandering, so that all voters have the power to choose their politicians, not the other way around. And if all this takes eliminating the filibuster, another Jim Crow relic, in order to secure the God-given rights of every American, then that’s what we should do.

Now, even if we do all this, even if every bogus voter-suppression law is struck off the books today, we’ve got to be honest with ourselves that too many of us choose not to exercise the franchise. Too many of our citizens believe their vote won’t make a difference, or they buy into the cynicism that, by the way, is the central strategy of voter suppression, to make you discouraged, to stop believing in your own power. So, we’re also going to have to remember what John said. If you don’t do everything you can do to change things, then they will remain the same. You only pass this way once. You have to give it all you have. As long as young people are protesting in the streets hoping real change takes hold, I’m hopeful, but we can’t casually abandon them at the ballot box. Not when few elections have been as urgent on so many levels as this one. We can’t treat voting as an errand to run if we have some time. We have to treat it as the most important action we can take on behalf of democracy, and like John, we have to give it all we have.

I was proud that John Lewis was a friend of mine. I met him when I was in law school. He came to speak. And I went up and I said, “Mr. Lewis, you are one of my heroes. What inspired me more than anything as a young man was to see what you and Reverend Lawson and Bob Moses and Diane Nash and others did.” And he got that kind of “Aw shucks, thank you very much.” Next time I saw him, I’d been elected to the United States Senate. And I told him, “John, I’m here because of you.” And on Inauguration Day in 2008-2009, he was one of the first people I greeted and hugged on that stand. And I told him, “This is your day too.”

He was a good and kind and gentle man. And he believed in us. Even when we don’t believe in ourselves. And it’s fitting that the last time John and I shared a public forum was on Zoom. And I’m pretty sure neither he nor I set up the Zoom call because we didn’t know how to work it. It was a virtual town hall with a gathering of young activists, who had been helping to lead this summer’s demonstrations in the wake of George Floyd’s death. And afterward, I spoke to John privately. And he could not have been prouder to see this new generation of activists standing up for freedom and equality. A new generation that was intent on voting and protecting the right to vote. In some cases, a new generation running for political office. And I told him all those young people, John, of every race and every religion, from every background and gender and sexual orientation—John, those are your children. They learned from your example, even if they didn’t always know it. They had understood through him what American citizenship requires, even if they’d only heard about his courage through the history books.

By the thousands, faceless, anonymous young people, Black and white, have taken our nation “back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.” Dr. King said that in the 1960s. And it came true again this summer. We see it outside our windows in big cities and rural towns. In men and women; young and old; straight Americans and LGBTQ Americans; Blacks, who long for equal treatment, and whites, who can no longer accept freedom for themselves while witnessing the subjugation of their fellow Americans. We see it in everybody doing the hard work of overcoming complacency, of overcoming our own fears and our own prejudices, our own hatreds. You see it in people trying to be better, truer versions of ourselves.

And that’s what John Lewis teaches us. That’s where real courage comes from, not from turning on each other, but by turning towards one another. Not by sowing hatred and division, but by spreading love and truth. Not by avoiding our responsibilities to create a better America and a better world, but by embracing those responsibilities with joy and perseverance and discovering that, in our beloved community, we do not walk alone.

What a gift John Lewis was. We are all so lucky to have had him walk with us for a while and show us the way. God bless you all. God bless America. God bless this gentle soul who pulled it closer to its promise. Thank you very much.

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How Cops Can Secretly Track Your Phone
Kim Zetter, The Intercept
Zetter writes: "Since May, as protesters around the country have marched against police brutality and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, activists have spotted a recurring presence in the skies: mysterious planes and helicopters hovering overhead, apparently conducting surveillance on protesters."

A guide to stingray surveillance technology, which may have been deployed at recent protests.

ince May, as protesters around the country have marched against police brutality and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, activists have spotted a recurring presence in the skies: mysterious planes and helicopters hovering overhead, apparently conducting surveillance on protesters. A press release from the Justice Department at the end of May revealed that the Drug Enforcement Agency and U.S. Marshals Service were asked by the Justice Department to provide unspecified support to law enforcement during protests. A few days later, a memo obtained by BuzzFeed News offered a little more insight on the matter; it revealed that shortly after protests began in various cities, the DEA had sought special authority from the Justice Department to covertly spy on Black Lives Matter protesters on behalf of law enforcement.

Although the press release and memo didn’t say what form the support and surveillance would take, it’s likely that the two agencies were being asked to assist police for a particular reason. Both the DEA and the Marshals possess airplanes outfitted with so-called stingrays or dirtboxes: powerful technologies capable of tracking mobile phones or, depending on how they’re configured, collecting data and communications from mobile phones in bulk.

Stingrays have been used on the ground and in the air by law enforcement for years but are highly controversial because they don’t just collect data from targeted phones; they collect data from any phone in the vicinity of a device. That data can be used to identify people — protesters, for example — and track their movements during and after demonstrations, as well as to identify others who associate with them. They also can inject spying software onto specific phones or direct the browser of a phone to a website where malware can be loaded onto it, though it’s not clear if any U.S. law enforcement agencies have used them for this purpose.

Although law enforcement has been using the technologies since the 1990s, the general public learned about them only in the last decade, and much about their capabilities remains unknown because law enforcement agencies and the companies that make the devices have gone to great lengths to keep details secret. Stingrays are routinely used to target suspects in drug and other criminal investigations, but activists also believe the devices were used during protests against the Dakota Access pipeline, and against Black Lives Matter protesters over the last three months. The Justice Department requires federal agents to obtain a probable cause warrant to use the technology in criminal cases, but there is a carve-out for national security. Given that President Donald Trump has referred to protesters as “terrorists,” and that paramilitary-style officers from the Department of Homeland Security have been deployed to the streets of Portland, Oregon, it’s conceivable that surveillance conducted at recent demonstrations has been deemed a national security matter — raising the possibility that the government may have used stingray technology to collect data on protesters without warrants.

To better understand the kind of surveillance that may be directed at protesters, here’s a breakdown of what we know and still don’t know about stingrays, and why their use is so controversial.

What is a stingray?

Stingray is the generic name for an electronic surveillance tool that simulates a cell phone tower in order to force mobile phones and other devices to connect to it instead of to a legitimate cell tower. In doing so, the phone or other device reveals information about itself and its user to the operator of the stingray. Other common names for the tool are “cell-site simulator” and “IMSI catcher.”

Why is it called a stingray?

The name stingray comes from the brand name of a specific commercial model of IMSI catcher made by the Florida-based Harris Corporation. That company’s StingRay is a briefcase-sized device that can be operated from a vehicle while plugged into the cigarette lighter. Harris also makes products like the Harpoon, a signal booster that makes the StingRay more powerful, and the KingFish, a smaller hand-held device that operates like a stingray and can be used by a law enforcement agent while walking around outside a vehicle. About a dozen other companies make variants of the stingray with different capabilities. The surveillance equipment is pricey and often sold as a package. For example, in documents obtained by Motherboard in 2016, Harris offered a KingFish package that cost $157,300 and a StingRay package that cost $148,000, not including training and maintenance. Documents obtained this year by the American Civil Liberties Union indicate that Harris has upgraded the StingRay to a newer device it calls a Crossbow, though not a lot of information is known about how it works. Separately, a classified catalog of surveillance tools leaked to The Intercept in 2015 describes other similar devices.

How does the stingray work?

Phones periodically and automatically broadcast their presence to the cell tower that is nearest to them, so that the phone carrier’s network can provide them with service in that location. They do this even when the phone is not being used to make or receive a call. When a phone communicates with a cell tower, it reveals the unique ID or IMSI number (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) associated with the SIM card in the phone. The IMSI number identifies that phone and its owner as a paying customer of a cell carrier, and that number can be matched by the carrier to the owner’s name, address, and phone number.

A stingray masquerades as a cell tower in order to get phones to ping it instead of legitimate cell towers, and in doing so, reveal the phones’ IMSI numbers. In the past, it did this by emitting a signal that was stronger than the signal generated by legitimate cell towers around it. The switch to 4G networks was supposed to address this in part by adding an authentication step so that mobile phones could tell if a cell tower is legitimate. But a security researcher named Roger Piqueras Jover found that the authentication on 4G doesn’t occur until after the phone has already revealed its IMSI number, which means that stingrays can still grab this data before the phone determines it’s not communicating with an authentic cell tower and switches to one that is authenticated. That vulnerability still exists in the 5G protocol, says Jover. Though the 5G protocol offers a feature that encrypts the IMSI when it’s disclosed during pre-authentication communication, law enforcement would simply be able to ask phone carriers to decrypt it for them. And a group of researchers from Purdue University and the University of Iowa also found a way to guess an IMSI number without needing to get a carrier to decrypt it.

Because a stingray is not really a tower on the carrier’s network, calls and messages to and from a phone can’t go through while the phone is communicating with the stingray. So after the stingray captures the device’s IMSI number and location, the stingray “releases” the phone so that it can connect to a real cell tower. It can do this by broadcasting a message to that phone that effectively tells the phone to find a different tower.

What can law enforcement do with the IMSI number?

Law enforcement can use a stingray either to identify all of the phones in the vicinity of the stingray or a specific phone, even when the phones are not in use. Law enforcement can then, with a subpoena, ask a phone carrier to provide the customer name and address associated with that number or numbers. They can also obtain a historical log of all of the cell towers a phone has pinged in the recent past to track where it has been, or they can obtain the cell towers it’s pinging in real time to identify the user’s current location. By catching multiple IMSI numbers in the vicinity of a stingray, law enforcement can also potentially uncover associations between people by seeing which phones ping the same cell towers around the same time.

If law enforcement already knows the IMSI number of a specific phone and person they are trying to locate, they can program that IMSI number into the stingray and it will tell them if that phone is nearby. Law enforcement can also home in on the location of a specific phone and its user by moving the stingray around a geographical area and measuring the phone’s signal strength as it connects to the stingray. The Harris StingRay can be operated from a patrol vehicle as it drives around a neighborhood to narrow a suspect’s location to a specific cluster of homes or a building, at which point law enforcement can switch to the hand-held KingFish, which offers even more precision. For example, once law enforcement has narrowed the location of a phone and suspect to an office or apartment complex using the StingRay, they can walk through the complex and hallways using the KingFish to find the specific office or apartment where a mobile phone and its user are located.

Does the device only track mobile phones?

No. In 2008, authorities used a StingRay and a KingFish to locate a suspect who was using an air card: an internet-connectivity device that plugs into a computer and allows the user to get online through a wireless cellular network. The suspect, Daniel Rigmaiden, was an identity thief who was operating from an apartment in San Jose, California. Rigmaiden had used a stolen credit card number and a fake name and address to register his internet account with Verizon. With Verizon’s help, the FBI was able to identify him. They determined the general neighborhood in San Jose where Rigmaiden was using the air card so they could position their stingray in the area and move it around until they found the apartment building from which his signal was coming. They then walked around the apartment complex with a hand-held KingFish or similar device to pinpoint the precise apartment Rigmaiden was using.

What is a dirtbox?

A dirtbox is the common name for specific models of an IMSI catcher that are made by a Boeing subsidiary, Maryland-based Digital Receiver Technology — hence the name “DRT box.” They are reportedly used by the DEA and Marshals Service from airplanes to intercept data from mobile phones. A 2014 Wall Street Journal article revealed that the Marshals Service began using dirtboxes in Cessna airplanes in 2007. An airborne dirtbox has the ability to collect data on many more phones than a ground-based stingray; it can also move more easily and quickly over wide areas. According to the 2006 catalog of surveillance technologies leaked in 2015, models of dirtboxes described in that document can be configured to track up to 10,000 targeted IMSI numbers or phones.

Do stingrays and dirtboxes have other capabilities?

Stingrays and dirtboxes can be configured for use in either active or passive mode. In active mode, these technologies broadcast to devices and communicate with them. Passive mode involves grabbing whatever data and communication is occurring in real time across cellular networks without requiring the phone to communicate directly with the interception device. The data captured can include the IMSI number as well as text messages, email, and voice calls. 

If that data or communication is encrypted, then it would be useless to anyone intercepting it if they don’t also have a way to  decrypt it. Phones that are using 4G employ strong encryption. But stingrays can force phones to downgrade to 2G, a less secure protocol, and tell the phone to use either no encryption or use a weak encryption that can be cracked. They can do this because even though most people use 4G these days, there are some areas of the world where 2G networks are still common, and therefore all phones have to have the ability to communicate on those networks.

The versions of stingrays used by the military can intercept the contents of mobile communications — text messages, email, and voice calls — and decrypt some types of this mobile communication. The military also uses a jamming or denial-of-service feature that prevents adversaries from detonating bombs with a mobile phone. 

In addition to collecting the IMSI number of a device and intercepting communications, military-grade IMSI catchers can also spoof text messages to a phone, according to David Burgess, a telecommunications engineer who used to work with U.S. defense contractors supporting overseas military operations. Burgess says that if the military knows the phone number and IMSI number of a target, it can use an IMSI catcher to send messages to other phones as if they are coming from the target’s phone. They can also use the IMSI catcher for a so-called man in the middle attack so that calls from one target pass through the IMSI catcher to the target phone. In this way, they can record the call in real time and potentially listen to the conversation if it is unencrypted, or if they are able to decrypt it. The military systems can also send a silent SMS message to a phone to alter its settings so that the phone will send text messages through a server the military controls instead of the mobile carrier’s server.

Can the devices be used to infect phones with malware?

Versions of the devices used by the military and intelligence agencies can potentially inject malware into targeted phones, depending on how secure the phone is. They can do this in two ways: They can either redirect the phone’s browser to a malicious web site where malware can be downloaded to the phone if the browser has a software vulnerability the attackers can exploit; or they can inject malware from the stingray directly into the baseband of the phone if the baseband software has a vulnerability. Malware injected into the baseband of a phone is harder to detect. Such malware can be used to turn the phone into a listening device to spy on conversations. Recently, Amnesty International reported on the cases of two Moroccan activists whose phones may have been targeted through such network injection attacks to install spyware made by an Israeli company.

U.S. law enforcement use of stingrays domestically is more curtailed, given that they, unlike the military, need to obtain warrants or court orders to use the devices in federal investigations. But there is little transparency or oversight around how the devices are used by federal agents and local police, so there is still a lot that is unknown: for example, whether they’ve ever been used to record the contents of mobile phone communications or to install malware on phones.

News stories suggest that some models of stingrays used by the Marshals Service can extract text messages, contacts, and photos from phones, though they don’t say how the devices do this. Documents obtained by the ACLU in 2015 also indicate such devices do have the ability to record the numbers of incoming and outgoing calls and the date, time, and duration of the calls, as well as to intercept the content of voice and text communications. But the Justice Department has long asserted publicly that the stingrays it uses domestically do not intercept the content of communications. The Justice Department has stated that the devices “may be capable of intercepting the contents of communications and, therefore, such devices must be configured to disable the interception function, unless interceptions have been authorized by a Title III [wiretapping] order.”

As for jamming communications domestically, Dakota Access pipeline protesters at Standing Rock, North Dakota, in 2016 described planes and helicopters flying overhead that they believed were using technology to jam mobile phones. Protesters described having problems such as phones crashing, livestreams being interrupted, and issues uploading videos and other posts to social media.

Why are stingrays and dirtboxes so controversial?

The devices don’t just pick up data about targeted phones. Law enforcement may be tracking a specific phone of a known suspect, but any phone in the vicinity of the stingray that is using the same cellular network as the targeted phone or device will connect to the stingray. Documents in a 2011 criminal case in Canada showed that devices used by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had a range of a third of a mile, and in just three minutes of use, one device had intercepted 136 different phones.

Law enforcement can also use a stingray in a less targeted way to sweep up information about all nearby phones. During the time a phone is connecting to or communicating with a stingray, service is disrupted for those phones until the stingray releases them. The connection should last only as long as it takes for the phone to reveal its IMSI number to the stingray, but it’s not clear what kind of testing and oversight the Justice Department has done to ensure that the devices release phones. Stingrays are supposed to allow 911 calls to pass through to a legitimate cell tower to avoid disrupting emergency services, but other emergency calls a user may try to make while their phone is connected to a stingray will not get through until the stingray releases their phone. It’s also not clear how effective the devices are at letting 911 calls go through. The FBI and DHS have indicated that they haven’t commissioned studies to measure this, but a study conducted by federal police in Canada found that the 911 bypass didn’t always work.

Depending on how many phones are in the vicinity of a stingray, hundreds could connect to the device and potentially have service disrupted. 

How long has law enforcement been using stingrays?

The technology is believed to have originated in the military, though it’s not clear when it was first used in combat zones or domestically in the U.S. The earliest public mention of a stingray-like device being used by U.S. law enforcement occurred in 1994, when the FBI used a crude, jury-rigged version of the tool to track former hacker Kevin Mitnick; authorities referred to that device as a Triggerfish. In a case in Utah in 2009, an FBI agent revealed in a court document that cell-site simulators had been in use by law enforcement for more than a decade. He also said they weren’t just used by the FBI but also by the Marshals Service, the Secret Service, and other agencies. Recent documents obtained by the ACLU also indicate that between 2017 and 2019, the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations unit has used stingrays at least 466 times in investigations. BuzzFeed News had previously obtained records showing that from 2013 to 2017, HSI had used the technology 1,885 times.

Aside from the potential for widespread surveillance, are there other problems with the technology?

The other controversy with stingrays involves secrecy and lack of transparency around their use. Law enforcement agencies and the companies that make the devices have prevented the public from obtaining information about their capabilities and from learning how often the technology is deployed in investigations. Agencies sign nondisclosure agreements with the companies, which they use as a shield whenever journalists or others file public records requests to obtain information about the technology. Law enforcement agencies claim criminals could craft anti-surveillance methods to undermine the technology if they knew how it worked. The companies themselves cite trade secrets and proprietary information to prevent the public from obtaining sales literature and manuals about the technology.

For years, law enforcement used the devices without obtaining a court order or warrant. Even when they did seek approval from a court, they often described the technology in misleading terms to make it seem less invasive. They would often refer to stingrays in court documents as a “pen register device,” passive devices that sit on a network and record the numbers dialed from a certain phone number. They withheld the fact that the devices force phones to connect to them, that they force other phones that aren’t the target device to connect to them, and that they can perform more functions than simply grabbing an IMSI number. Most significantly, they withheld the fact that the device emits signals that can track a user and their phone inside a private residence. After the FBI used a stingray to track Rigmaiden (the identity thief in San Jose) in his apartment, Rigmaiden’s lawyers got the Justice Department to acknowledge it qualified as a Fourth Amendment search that would require a warrant.

Law enforcement agents have not only deceived judges, however; they’ve also misled defense attorneys seeking information about how agents tracked their clients. In some court documents, law enforcement officials have indicated that they obtained location information about the defendant from a “confidential source,” when in truth they used a stingray to track them.

To address this deception, the Justice Department in 2015 implemented a new policy requiring all federal agents engaged in criminal investigations to obtain a probable cause search warrant before using a stingray. It also requires agents and prosecutors to tell judges when the warrant they are seeking is for a stingray; and it requires them to limit the use of the stingray’s capabilities to tracking the location of a phone and logging the phone numbers for calls received and made by the phone. They cannot collect the contents of communication, such as text messages and emails. And agents are required to purge the data they collect from non-targeted phones within 24 hours or 30 days, depending on the circumstances.

The problem, however, is that Justice Department policy is not law. And although the policy includes state and local law enforcement agencies when they are working on a case with federal agents and want to use the devices, it does not cover those agencies when they are working on cases alone. To address this loophole, lawmakers would need to pass a federal law banning the use of stingrays without a warrant, but efforts to do so have so far been unsuccessful.

One bigger issue with the Justice Department policy is that, as noted above, it only applies to criminal investigations, not national security ones, and it also includes a carve-out for “exigent circumstances” that are not clearly defined. Federal agents are not required to seek a warrant to use the technology in cases involving such circumstances. Whether the government has used the technology against Black Lives Matter protesters without a warrant is likely something that will remain a secret for some time.

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Photos of activists killed in Colombia. (photo: D. Garzon Herazo/NurPhoto)

Colombia Was Deadliest Country for Land Rights Activists in 2019
Reuters
Excerpt: "Colombia was the deadliest country for land rights activists in 2019, as killings of environmental defenders soared in the Andean country, according to a report published by advocacy group Global Witness on Wednesday."
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Rafiki the silverback gorilla in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest national park, Uganda, in 2019. (photo: Joshua Guenther/AP)

Landmark Ruling Sees Ugandan Poacher Jailed for Killing Rafiki the Gorilla
Samuel Okiror, Guardian UK
Okiror writes: "In the first conviction of its kind, a court in Uganda has jailed a poacher for six years after he admitted killing one of the country's best-known silverback mountain gorillas in a national park." 

Six-year sentence following death of one of country’s best-known silverback mountain gorillas is first of its kind

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Felix Byamukama, from Murole in the south-west district of Kisoro, pleaded guilty to illegal entry into a protected area and killing the gorilla named Rakifi and a duiker antelope. Byamukama had said earlier that he killed the animal in self-defence after he was attacked. It is the first time Uganda, home to 50% of the world’s mountain gorillas, has jailed someone for such an offence and the sentence has been widely welcomed by wildlife groups.

The Kisoro chief magistrate, Julius Borere, on Wednesday handed down concurrent sentences of six, five and five years for killing the gorilla, the duiker and for being in possession of bush pig and duiker meat.

Byamukama was arrested on 4 June with three others for the death of Rafiki in Bwindi Impenetrable national park.

He was found in possession of a spear and rope snares.

The three others, Evarist Bampabenda, Valence Museveni and Yonasi Mubangizi, denied the charges and were remanded to Kisoro prison, awaiting trial.

The gorilla was reported missing on 1 June and its body was found the following day by a search team in the Hakato area.

In a press statement, Sam Mwandha, executive director for the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), welcomed the landmark ruling.

“We are relieved that Rafiki has received justice and this should serve as an example to other people who kill wildlife,” said Mwandha.

“If one person kills wildlife, we all lose; therefore, we request every person to support our efforts of conserving wildlife for the present and future generations.”

Paul Lubega, a tour operator, tweeted: “This guy deserved a life imprisonment.”

At the time of his death, the gorilla, believed to be around 25 years old, was the leader of a family of 17 members that included eight adult females, two juveniles and three infants.

“The new law [Uganda Wildlife Act 2019] is tough, and anyone involved in illegal wildlife activities will face the wrath of the law,” said Mwandha.

The act, signed into law by President Yoweri Museveni on 1 July last year, is stricter than its predecessor and provides penalties for offences relating to wildlife including poaching and illegal extraction of resources from protected areas.

“The idea behind the law was that stern penalties would deter wildlife crimes. This is especially important now that Covid-19 has severely affected the livelihoods of people around protected areas who used to benefit from tourism,” Edmond Twinobusingye, environmental practitioner and conservation biologist, told the Guardian.

“We run a risk of these people turning to the poaching of wildlife and illegal extraction of resources from protected areas to support their livelihoods.”

UWA said there has been an increase in wildlife poaching and more than 300 incidents were recorded in parks following months of closure during the nationwide Covid-19 shutdown imposed in March.

With Covid-19 cases on the rise in Uganda and neighbouring countries, Twinobusingye said it was vital that humans keep away from primates to avoid cross transmission of the virus and other zoonoses to them.

“If gorillas were to contract Covid-19, it would be a disaster for local economies and the revenues from tourism, since gorilla tracking is one of the most sought-out activities in Uganda’s parks,” he said.

Mountain gorillas are Uganda’s major tourist attraction.

“We need more involvement of communities in wildlife conservation activities and there is need to support communities around protected areas to diversify their income-generating activities now that tourism is on a low. This will provide options other than relying on illegal extraction of resources from protected areas,” said Twinobusingye.

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