 A jury in London’s Old Bailey criminal court heard prosecutors last week make a case against a Bulgarian man who had stored enough spy equipment in rented rooms in England to fill the Washington, D.C., Spy Museum. The rooms also contained two devices that should be of interest to any American interested in protecting privacy. Among the thousands of paper and digital exhibits shown to the jury were pendant necklaces, soda bottles, water bottles, and a cap with cameras inside, as well as a device to clone car keys. These surveillance tech devices were allegedly held by 46-year-old Orlin Roussev in a guesthouse at a resort on the east coast of England. Roussev is charged with being part of a Russian plot to employ two devices commonly used by the FBI and state and local law enforcement in domestic cases. Among the items prosecutors say were found were two international mobile subscriber identity, or IMSI, devices worth £160,000. These devices, popularly known as “stingrays” are, in essence, fake cell towers that can pull data out of a nearby cellphone and use it to track its owner’s location. Roussev and several others are accused by British prosecutors of planning to go to Stuttgart, Germany, where Ukrainian soldiers are being trained to operate Patriot missile-defense batteries and to use stingrays to link to their personal phones. The British government says these devices were to then be used to follow the Ukrainian soldiers back to Ukraine, locate them in the battlefield with their Patriot missiles, and target them for annihilation. In a domestic context, stingrays can vacuum up the data and locations of a large number of civilian cellphones in a geofenced area. PPSA has learned that local governments signed an agreement with the FBI that severely restricts what local police and prosecutors can reveal about the use of stingrays in a trial. The agreement’s boilerplate stipulates that if the agency “learns that a District Attorney, prosecutor, or a court” is considering releasing such information, the customer agency must “immediately notify the FBI in order to allow sufficient time for the FBI to intervene …” Once the FBI gains warrantless access to your location and movements, it won’t act like the Russians do and fire an Oreshnik missile at you. But it can follow you everywhere you go, make a case against you in court, and no jury will ever know how this evidence was obtained. Perhaps spies accused of acting for Russia might receive more respect for due process in London than an American targeted by a stingray in your hometown. Comments are closed.
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