Talk:Harris Corporation/Archives/2014

"Tricky" products

The article states that the Stingray "trick[s] the mobile handset into connecting to it instead of the real cellular network, so that authorities can monitor all wireless voice and data traffic originating in a given area, as well as to pinpoint the location of mobile handsets."

A couple of things. A spectrum antenna can monitor all electronic emissions within its area. This was originally stopped by the feds when they found out it was happening for cell phones back in the 1990s. But it is not much of a "trick." The gadget simply picks up electromagnetic emissions. This is trivial, in itself. And inexpensive.

Second, the article implies that it completes the call somehow. This seems doubtful because it implies a connection with the phone system, Verizon, Cellular One, etc. I suspect that it monitors one side of the conversation. How could it pick up the answer (as for a regular wiretap) without connecting into the regular phone system? Unless the person was talking to the same antenna, which would be fairly rare, I would guess. If it really does complete the call, the article needs to state exactly how that is done. It is not obvious.

Third, it implies that monitoring the target is automatically illegal. I suspect that the police have a "wiretap" authority for the single individual. The "extra" people (not mentioned in the wiretap authorization) that are monitored can certainly be called into question. And certainly (as for a regular wiretap), they would want to know where the caller was calling from. Note that for a regular wiretap authorization, there is no "protection" for the people calling into that number. They may be innocent, but they are recorded anyway. All legally. This has been going on nationwide for decades.

It just seems to have too much "gee whilikers" to the paragraph. Except for the extra people being monitored (if true), it seems all quite above board and routine. Student7 (talk) 16:17, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

The section you are discussing refers to the Harris family of surveillance products, not just the Stingray which is the most well known. The Hailstorm product can monitor content, the Ars Technical article cited in the table includes this quote, "These little-known cousins of the Stingray cannot only track movements—they can also perform denial-of-service attacks on phones and intercept conversations."

I don't understand why you object to language stating that the cell phone is being tricked into connecting to an IMSI device operated by law enforcement instead of a phone company IMSI. Would spoofed, misled or deceived be better terms? Isn't this what law enforcement is doing? This language is commonly used when discussing hacking devices or systems.

Where is it implied that this monitoring is illegal? This is a vague claim. Rather, the issue of legality is not discussed here. -- Bluenoah7 (talk) 01:29, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Stingray and Hailstorm product

Someone does not want any mention of the most well-known product of the Harris Corp, the Stingray cellphone tracking device. Please discuss here why you feel this product should not be mentioned in the article. Bluenoah7 (talk) 01:36, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

@Bluenoah7:, indeed. IP contributor 192.160.116.100 is editing from a netblock registered to Harris Corp. Jcb1234 (talk · contribs) and JCBurke1234 (talk · contribs) appear to be the same editor abusing multiple accounts. I've a suspicion that both are one in the same. Also am a bit inclined to open an SPI on them... -- dsprc ^[talk] 03:52, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

@Jcb1234: @JCBurke1234:, What isn't substantiated about these entries again? Do you want more sources about Harris Corps unconstitutional mass surveillance systems that sweep up innocent peoples communications? Because if that is the case, I can supply those all day until the cows come home. I believe the lawsuits over these products are substantial enough. Want me to expand the section further (at odds with my Imp-ish nature but, I'm more than happy to make an exception here)? Please elaborate on your specific objections and position here, instead of in the edit summary, so that we may reach a consensus on the content of this article. -- dsprc ^[talk] 01:10, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Two items to consider here. Harris makes other products. Shouldn't they be listed as well, in order of their profitability or quantity.? Up to a point. Second, Harris, being a large corporation, has dozens, if not hundreds of lawsuits filed against it at any one time. To avoid WP:UNDUE, shouldn't these be limited to the most notable? I'm not particularly against listing stingray, but want to make sure it's not just the "news of the day", perishable tomorrow, which identifies most of the media. This is supposed to be an encyclopedia. Student7 (talk) 13:51, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Absolutely we should include mention of other products, particularly those that attract broad media attention as is required for notabilty. Right now the article is lacking in that regard (lot of puffery single sourced to Harris); feel free to contribute and expand upon this category. If you do even the slightest bit of investigation you will find this is not a flavour of the day thing, but a longstanding issue, particularly in the context of the mass surveillance, human and civil rights debate happening across the world these days. I have been bold, and introduced some prose in this regard (in addition to the list). Feel free to edit, trim and refine - this is supposed to be a collaborative project after all. -- dsprc ^[talk] 15:08, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

@Jcb1234: @JCBurke1234:, Please do not continue vandalizing this article by deleting whole sections that you claim are "unsubstantiated" even though there are multiple citations to a variety of sources which verify the information. Please discuss here why you feel this information is unsubstantiated. Bluenoah7 (talk) 00:13, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Hello user at 192.160.116.101, you deleted the entire section on mobile surveillance products saying, "Removing publicly reported but outdated and unsubstantiated information." If this information is outdated then please update it, do not delete it. The sources listed do substantiate the information and meet the requirements outlined in Wikipedia:Verifiability. Bluenoah7 (talk) 17:32, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Aaaand Burke has created a new sock to evade their temporary block for edit warring (I'd rather they engaged in discussion so this didn't happen). They seem to be an employee of Harris whose only intent here is to censor this information, not to contribute constructively to the encyclopaedia. I have requested temporary, semi page protection here as a result of this and the similar edits coming from IP netblocks registered to Harris Corp (Hurricane Electric has a further list of Harris IPv4 netblocks should there be similar problems in the furture). -- dsprc ^[talk] 23:42, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Notice that the lawsuits filed by the ACLU for Freedom of Information and Sunshine Act violation are not against Harris. Not sure what the policy is with legitimate products, where the company itself has not been sued.

Say company A makes "widgets," which is the case here. NYC buys some. Someone else says that NYC violated some law (purchasing, contracts, Sunshine, whatever). Seems non-WP:TOPIC for Harris, per se. Yes, Harris did request non-disclosure, but that procedure, at least, is extremely common for all companies with an untried ("beta") product. If Harris contracts janitorial services, for example, the contractor (and maybe janitorial employees) would be required to sign a general non-disclosure agreement for any products they happened to hear about/read about in the trash! Student7 (talk) 00:37, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Harris did not request an NDA, they required it. According to media reports, even to the point where agents of the State (weakly) claim they were forbidden from obtaining warrants in some cases. Florida has one of the most liberal set of public records laws in the country; any entity that contracts or deals with the State is subject to public records laws as they are considered extensions and agents of the State. Notice that the legal maneuvers are directly targeted at documents pertaining to Harris Corp., their cooperation with Government, and the deployment and use of their systems by Government. They are agents of the State so, to get the documents, you sue the State. The janitor is a poor example because that involves two private entities mutually agreeing upon a private contract for services between themselves, not Government. The product is also not "beta," as the technology is proven (before Harris' entrance to this market segment) and commercially available from Harris for over a decade (Stingray, Hailstorm et al, are their most well known and widely reported on products... do we leave out mention of the iPhone from Apple Inc.?). The "trials" speak to the State demoing of and deploying the units in the field, not the efficacy of the platforms as some sort of tech-preview or w/e.

With that said, you are encouraged to investigate the sources (which you seem not to have done, as below), and to edit the section in question. I just hacked it out over a couple of minutes when I was supposed to be working (mainly because I despise tables.. COI! ;-)). $DEITY knows it needs work and clean up (especially the way Bluenoah7 cited the table, which needs to be merged upwards); but then again, this whole article is in pretty bad shape. -- dsprc ^[talk] 15:30, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Copyrighted material donated

Harris has agreed to license material on its website for use on Wikipedia from its website and including an about page. The materials are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported and GNU Free Documentation License (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts). The permission was received via the Volunteer Response Team. See WP:DONATETEXT for details on how granting permission works. The relevant ticket number is ticket:2014092510031038 if another OTRS member would like to confirm. Please consider using {{Text release}} to indicate that the use of the copyright text is permissible and from where the text came from.

At the moment, it might be best to avoid using any content while I try to confirm which webpages exactly are allowed for use. It was only explicitly clear that the about page was allowed. —Mikemoral♪♫ 18:32, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

The list of links from which we were given permission to use material for the article is

• http://harris.com/
• http://healthcare.harris.com/
• http://itservices.harris.com/
• http://www.harriscaprock.com/
• http://govcomm.harris.com/
• http://govcomm.harris.com/
• http://rf.harris.com/

Again, for emphasis, it's probably best to use {{Text release}} so we can have a record on this talk page of where we got some material from included with an exact URL of the page and an archived URL, possibly using WebCite or whatever similar service. —Mikemoral♪♫ 20:33, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Updated Information on Business Segments

Hi! I am a Harris employee and I added updated information under the Business Segments section. Another editor reverted it saying it was "overly promotional" and a cut and paste from our website. I would love feedback from others on this -- it's obvious I did not cut and paste, but added information based on the facts on the website. I was very careful to make sure it is neutral in tone and avoided any marketing-speak. Thanks! Grimmmmmm (talk) 20:31, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

@Grimmmmmm: As explained ([1] (sorry for signpost bots in tail)), I reverted the material as overly promotional because it is from the propaganda dept., makes the article read like a brochure, and because you are an employee with an inherent conflict of interest (and suspected sock/meat-puppet of Jim Burke). You reused some material (like this or that); Which is fine as the material was donated and of less concern than previously (removal of weasel words was most appreciated). As said, ([2][3]) the article has issues and we could use (selective) expansion, but I'm unsure if this is the proper route or content. However, what we do not need is even more material single sourced to Harris; which is both an unreliable and undesirable source of information (WP:V, WP:RS), already comprises a large portion of content sources (if sourced at all!) and whose employees have a poor track record of behaviour in this article which further reinforces allegations[4] of their reliabilty or impropriety. Feedback and contributions from other editors is requested and most welcome. Namaste. -- dsprc ^[talk] 05:35, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

I appreciate my friend dsprc's input and desire to keep close to Wikipedia's mission. I also appreciate his positive tone despite any mentions of puppetry! I would humbly suggest that posting neutral information about what the company does and the products and services they offer is within the letter and the spirit of Wikipedia rules, no matter one's employer. People coming to this page are looking for these basics -- what is this company and what does it do? I would also humbly submit that dsprc actually said my last submission was an improvement over the current content in many ways, but deleted the entire entry for some reason. Seems removing the specific passages he thought could be improved would be the way to go. I am more than happy to work with any editors on the wording of this updated business segment information. Thank you for your consideration!Grimmmmmm (talk) 13:32, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Having experienced this (employee furnished material) on a couple of articles, my suggestion would be to contribute what you have and allow neutral editors to take it from there. If you think the editors are anti-Harris (grudge or competitor), that might be another story. I don't see that here. Student7 (talk) 19:29, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Taking the input above from dsprc and Student7, I have added updated information with edits to make it more straight-forward and factual and removed any subjective or opinionated language. As before, input is appreciated. Thanks!Grimmmmmm (talk) 20:10, 26 November 2014 (UTC)Grimmmmmm

Unless contested, the additions look okay. Next, you need to add some context here. How important are the respective projects? Does the company "market" Radar X antennae but never sell any? For Harris, I suggest starting with projects over $100 million and work your way down by factors. Presumably details are available in the annual report or the Form Q or whatever they have to file with the SEC. Quantity sold may be relevant where quantity is a factor.

Right now, you have "bullets" with nothing under them. Some may not deserve explanation. Sales under (say) $5 million for a Harris product or service may not be worth reporting unless there is "outside" citations. Student7 (talk) 01:43, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Here is SEC 10Q filing: http://www.getfilings.com/sec-filings/100128/HARRIS-CORP-DE-_10-Q. Tends to put divisions into perspective. Student7 (talk) 00:57, 11 December 2014 (UTC)