Stingray technology, New crime-fighting tool secretly monitors cell phones

By Marjorie R. Esman
Guest Columnist

The American public faces yet another threat to our privacy in the form of a cell phone tracking device commonly referred to in law enforcement circles as Stingray. Simply, this latest surveillance technology can covertly track and monitor hundreds of cell phone users simultaneously, transmitting their locations and worse, identifying who they are. More and more law enforcement agencies are using this new tech- toy under the guise of investigating “terrorism.” But Stingray is most often used as part of ordinary daily crime fighting, to track suspects for sometimes minor offenses that have nothing to do with terrorism.

Stingray works by creating a fake or “virtual” cell phone tower, capable of sending and receiving signals. This faux tower is able to get between the cell phone user and their company’s actual tower. Sending out a false signal from the bogus tower, it tricks cell phones into transmitting their locations and the identity of the person who owns the phone. Starting there, authorities can access all sorts of other personal information, while you, the user, are completely unaware. When someone is under investigation, their calls are monitored – as are all the calls to anyone that person has called. So, to use the ACLU’s favorite example, if a suspect calls to order a pizza, everyone else who calls the same pizza place has their calls intercepted – even if they are under no suspicion at all. Using Stingray technology, authorities can intercept and monitor not just calls and conversations, but also internet traffic. They can even send fake texts and install malware on any device within reach of its signal, and it’s all done in secret.

Law enforcement trying to keep Stingray a secret

Stingray’s indiscriminate monitoring of innocent people’s cell phones violates our First and Fourth Amendment rights to speak to whomever we want and be free from unreasonable search and seizure. For the government to spy on our phone conversations is the definition of “search” – and without a warrant, government has no business doing that. Because it’s used in secret, a person is denied the right even to mount a defense against this intrusion on their privacy. The ACLU and others have begun to warn and educate the public about Stingray and about other emerging surveillance technology because of its intrusiveness and invasion of privacy.

In response to the pushback, law enforcement agencies have become as secretive about Stingray’s use as the technology is in its surveillance tactics. Police forces often borrow Stingray gear from state or federal agencies like the state police or U.S. Marshalls. Yet they work to either justify the technology or conceal that it’s even being used. Police have been known to deliberately conceal Stingray’s use in court documents to judges in criminal investigations. In Sarasota, Florida, a police officer was found to have altered a warrant application to disguise the use of Stingray technology. Prosecutors have even threatened to withhold evidence, potentially hurting their case rather than divulge that Stingray was used. Last year in Baltimore, prosecutors withdrew key evidence, including a cell phone and a gun, rather than divulge that the police had employed Stingray in their surveillance of a suspect.

Here in Louisiana, we’re not even sure how much Stingray is used. We know that the Attorney General’s office has the ability to use it, but we don’t know whether they do, or whether other local police departments use it. And that’s part of the problem: the public can’t even know whether they are being spied on.

Can the law keep up with Stingray?

The fact is that Stingray isn’t needed even to fight terrorism. With all of the devices used to spy on innocent Americans in the name of the “war on terror,” we haven’t caught a single “terrorist” using those technologies. Instead, the “war on terror” has become a way to spy on ordinary Americans and a tool for ordinary criminal investigations unrelated to terrorist activities.

We can stop it, though. We can adopt state and federal laws banning the use of spying technology. We shouldn’t need to, because the Constitution is supposed to protect us from warrantless searches. But specific legislation protecting the privacy rights of Americans, so that we can all make phone calls without fear that the government is listening, would help. And it’s important to understand the ways in which our privacy rights can be eroded. We don’t want “Big Brother” listening to our most private conversations. Let’s tell them to stop.

This article originally published in the February 9, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.