The NYPD has used cell-site simulators, commonly known as Stingrays, more than 1,000 times since 2008, according to documents turned over to the New York Civil Liberties Union. The documents represent the first time the department has acknowledged using the devices.
The NYPD also disclosed that it does not get a warrant before using a Stingray, which sweeps up massive amounts of data. Instead, the police obtain a “pen register order” from a court, more typically used to collect call data for a specific phone. Those orders do not require the police to establish probable cause. Additionally, the NYPD has no written policy guidelines on the use of Stingrays.
Stingrays work by imitating cellphone towers. They force all nearby phones to connect to them, revealing the owners’ locations. That means they collect data on potentially hundreds of people. They are small enough to fit in a suitcase, or be mounted on a plane.
When they were originally developed in 2003, Stingrays were designed for military use. But in the past decade, they have increasingly been purchased by law enforcement agencies. According to the ACLU, Stingrays are used by at least 59 police departments in 23 states, and at least 13 federal agencies, including the DEA, FBI, and the IRS. Because most departments withhold information about Stingrays, these numbers likely underrepresent the total.
In December, The Intercept published a secret U.S. government catalogue of cellphone surveillance technology, including Stingrays and “dirt-boxes.” The advertisements boast that many of the items can spy on “up to 10,000 targets.”
Stingrays have long been a topic of concern for privacy activists. “Cell-site simulators are powerful surveillance devices that can track people, including in their homes, and collect information on innocent bystanders,” said Mariko Hirose, a senior staff attorney at the NYCLU. “If they are going to be used in communities the police should at minimum obtain a warrant and follow written policies.”
Instead, law enforcement agencies have fought to keep Stingrays secret, even dropping criminal cases to avoid disclosing anything about them. The FBI has forced local police agencies to sign Stingray-related non-disclosure agreements, claiming that criminals and terrorists who know about Stingrays could take countermeasures against them.
The increasing use of Stingrays, coupled with the lack of transparency, has alarmed civil liberties groups. “I think it’s critical to have transparency about the use of technology like Stingrays,” said Faiza Patel, an attorney with the Brennan Center for Justice. “That’s what allows courts, the public, and our elected officials to weigh in on the proper rules.”
In September, the Department of Justice issued guidelines requiring its officers to seek probable cause warrants before using a Stingray. But the guidelines only applied to federal law enforcement agencies, not to state and local police, who have fought such a change. In one ongoing court case, the state of Maryland has argued that anyone who turns on their phone consents to having his or her location tracked.
In November, Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, introduced the GPS Act, a bill that would extend the Department of Justice’s guidelines to all law enforcement agencies. “Buying a smartphone shouldn’t be interpreted as giving the government a free pass to track your movements,” Wyden said.
See the government catalogue here:
Top photo: “nypd” by Nick Allen, used under CC BY 2.0/ cropped and color corrected from original.
I suppose by reading The Intercept_ that we also consent to have our locations tracked.
1984, 1984…
NYPD is not the only dept using Stingrays. San Diego PD has been using them for some time also.
Spying & surveillance of the public is NOT limited to cell phone tower location imitators. Just drive from L.A. to Vegas along I-15. There are surveillance cameras every mile along the way, all pointing on the cars & their occupants. Some of these cameras are small, and some are large (apparently with telephoto lenses). Big Brother knows every move of every gambler along the way.
They MUST be for National Security. To my knowledge, this surveillance network has never been disclosed to the public or its cost.
Thank you taxpayer!
This is permitted under law, and is done with a court order. Read below.
Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the installation and use of the pen register was not a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and hence no warrant was required. The pen register was installed on telephone company property at the telephone company’s central offices. In the Majority opinion, Justice Blackmun rejected the idea that the installation and use of a pen register constitutes a violation of the “legitimate expectation of privacy” since the numbers would be available to and recorded by the phone company anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._Maryland
“The text of New York’s pen register law does not apply to StingRays, and for good reason,” Ms. Hirose, the civil liberties union lawyer, said. “That law was intended only to authorize the use of the primitive devices of the past that captured outgoing and incoming phone numbers on a landline. We’re now living in a different technological reality.”
But Lawrence Byrne, the Police Department’s deputy commissioner for legal matters, said that the changing technology did not alter the legal framework at all. Equipped with a court order to gather basic information about incoming and outgoing phone calls, detectives could now get that data in real time by tracking the phones with a StingRay.
“This is a pen register on a cellphone — it’s accomplished a different way because you can’t tap into the telephone pole,” Mr. Byrne told reporters in a phone interview. Phones might now move around, he said, but “that doesn’t limit us in getting that information **as long as we have a court order** to get that information wherever the phone goes.”
He added, “We’ve been doing this as long as phones existed, and we had technology to get into it.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/nyregion/new-york-police-dept-cellphone-tracking-stingrays.html
I recently joked w/a relative via cellphone about an unfortunate mutual friend who was playing loud music several blocks from our local university. We laughed because he mistakenly thought “campus police,” were restricted to campus. So, our young buddy scoffed when an angry, loud music, un-appreciating neighbor threatened to call these enforcers. Our friend was then chagrined to discover that the “campus police,” were indeed just a division of the regular constabulary who had jurisdiction in the neighborhood adjacent to campus, & promptly ruined our buddy’s good time. The joke was in a poor German accent, “und you thought you vould be zafe ofer here in Poland? NEIN!” That very night I was singled out for harassment and arrest on the road, even though I broke no laws. During my ordeal the police repeatedly asked about the whereabouts of the relative I had been joking w/earlier that day. This relative has likewise broken no law & has no outstanding warrants. ‘Very suspicious.
Every American has a constitutional right “to be left alone” – as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis reminded Americans decades ago.
The letter & spirit of the 4th Amendment is still the “supreme law of the land” under the Supremacy Clause, it has never been amended to legalize “preemption policies” modeled after the communist secret police during the Cold War – which the Bush Administration adopted after 9/11 – aka: Bush Preemption Doctrine.
Currently in the U.S. there is no legal mechanism for a citizen harassed/blacklisted by a communist style secret police to report abuse – there is no “paper trail” for federal, state and local agencies practicing communist style policing – so even if a citizen is aware of the blacklisting, there is no watchdog to report the violations of Title 18 criminal statutes perpetrated by government officials or their contractors.
As with the communist secret police model, many targets are not even aware that their lives were destroyed by America’s secret police – these crime victims can’t even report the crime. If the crime victims do realize it was a communist style secret police, they can only go to the U.S. Department of Justice – the same agency that is driving preemption policies and deputizing local/state authorities.
Think it couldn’t happen here – it happened to a Baptist minister that also preached James Madison’s blueprint for government – Martin Luther King, Jr. . Today’s communist style secret police is far worse than MLK’s era due to computers and the electronic technology. We need honest judges and honest Supreme Court justices more than ever to end these unAmerican practices.
Information can be cherry-picked from collected data on Judges also.
As it was for most TI’s like us who are innocent.
Great article. It’s too bad I still won’t be able to convice most of my circle on the importance of privacy. I’ll hear the same, well if you aren’t doing anything wrong, you have no reason to fear.
Great argument that works for me. “You know what kind of governments collect data on all thier citizens? Communist governments collect metadata and such. Are you a communist”
What I see here is a table, not an explanation. There are over 1000 cases listed, many for very serious crimes like robbery, rape and homicide. Not visible are any cases of “came up empty”. If this is a count of how many times Stingrays were “used”, then “used” means “cited in a criminal prosecution”, not “looked at” or “turned on”. Had I to take a guess though, I would think that such a mass of crimes like this in which the evidence is actually relevant demands that the things must be tracking something close to every New Yorker on every call.
Locations are blanked out. If surveillance is not yet 100%, I wonder what neighborhoods have them and what neighborhoods don’t……
Since it is necessary for democracy to exist, these technologies will either be defeated or democracy will die. Necessity is the mother of creation. What we will have to invent to remain free remains to be seen, but you can bet it is in the pipeline right now. Democracy and human rights are necessary!
Digital communication technology is evolving at pace that will constantly challenge existing legal safeguards into the foreseeable future. Give a cop a taser and he will eventually feel the need to use it. Likewise, the stingray is an extremely seductive piece of technology to those who already have little regard for civil liberties or privacy concerns.