Tuesday, October 05, 2010

US Marshal Service's Electronic Surveillance Manual

Last week, the FOIA fairy delivered 25 pages of internal rules that outline when and how the US Marshal Service uses electronic surveillance methods. According to the cover letters accompanying the documents, the policies are "obsolete" and that "the office is preparing to rewrite/revise it, which could take 30 days or longer to complete."

The full document can be downloaded here (pdf)

The most interesting things that jumped out to me:

1. One of the most heavily redacted sections relates to the use of trigger fish, or cell site analyzers, which allow the government to locate phones without the assistance of the phone company.


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2. The special rules that USMS investigators must follow before wiretapping VIPs such as Members of Congress, Governors and Judges:


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3. The revelation that USMS advises investigators to always seek "hybrid" 2703(d) + pen register orders, rather than plain pen register orders when they are investigating a suspect.


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2 comments:

  1. dre4:37 PM

    With regards to your number 1 above, it appears that anyone can track the locations of cell radio-transmitting devices using an IMSI Catcher, which now has open-source equivalents using the USRP hardware and OpenBTS software.

    From http://blog.c22.cc/2010/09/24/brucon-gsm-security-fact-and-fiction/

    "IMSI catching is often used by police to track phones used by drug dealers. By doing this they can detect the IMSI of every phone used for interception"

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  2. kay sieverding1:40 PM

    USMS is a dangerous agency. USMS will detain people for months and months without a criminal charge, without an arraignment and without a bail hearing. I know because this happened to me. I don't have a criminal record and have never been arraigned but USMS arrested me and detained me for 5 months without any papers being filed by an authorized US attorney. The only time that a government prosecutor even showed up he (Robert Anderson) said that the "government isn't a party to this". This is in a transcript I put on PACER. Never mind, some USMS decision maker didn't like me or didn't respect my rights so they decided to detain me anyway, strip search me at gun point, hold me with convicted felons, and drag me around the country in chains. I think the reason that USMS did this was to get free sex or free lap dances from prostitutes and strippers associated with former judge Edward Nottingham -- The Denver Players, Diamond Cabaret etc. and to coverup USMS getting free sex free lap dances. Alternatively it could be because I sued a convicted drug dealer who was president of a city council in a city I sued and it is possible that someone just paid someone in USMS to detain me without due process of law.

    Anyone who is interested in USMS should look to the signature of Edward Bordley. I have 4 so called "affidavits under penalty of perjury" directed to me and two directed to other people and they all have the exact same scanned signature. Mr. Bordley is blind and can't answer questions or provide information about anything he read unless it is in braille. DOJ/ USMS documents claimed that Mr. Bordley signed the various documents on the dates listed on the documents but obviously he didn't; it was just a tiff that was pasted into the document and USMS does not even offer a calendar showing they even met with Mr. Bordley. I am sorry that he is blind but his blindness shouldn't be used to coverup illegal detentions.

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