Citing security reasons, the Obama administration has been quietly enforcing the local police to keep knowledge of surveillance technology a secret. The government has been intervening in state public records and criminal trials that use this technology. Forcing the local police to stay mum about the purchase and use of powerful surveillance equipment.
Stingray is a well-known, powerful device that allows law enforcement to cellphones used by suspects and gather information. The equipment works by fooling the cellphone into thinking that it is a phone company’s tower, and sending confidential data such as unique subscriber number and other account credentials. This allows police departments to track your cellphone data without even you making a call or sending a message. And it also reduces the dependance on service providers, to gather crucial information. The police will never need to ask service providers for data if they have the equipment themselves.
But without complete knowledge on how the technology works or under what circumstances it’s used, we will never know if it is violating a person’s constitutional rights.
Nathan Freed Wessler, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which has fought for the release of these types of records, says,
“These extreme secrecy efforts are in relation to very controversial, local government surveillance practices using highly invasive technology. If public participation means anything, people should have the facts about what the government is doing to them.
Harris Corp., a major manufacturer of this technology was asked to build a secret element into the equipment. It was an authorization agreement that requires the local police “to coordinate with the FBI for the acquisition and use of the equipment”. Also, these defense providing companies need to seek FCC authorization before selling wireless devices that interfere with radio frequencies.
Though the company is restricted from talking about it’s contracts to the government, public filings showed government sales of communications systems such as the Stingray accounted for nearly one-third of its $5 billion in revenue.
“It’s troubling to think the FBI can just trump the state’s open records law,”
said Ginger McCall, director of the open government project at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. McCall suspects the surveillance would not pass constitutional muster.
“The vast amount of information it sweeps in is totally irrelevant to the investigation.”
A court case regarding the public release of information from the Tucson Police Department includes an affidavit from an FBI special agent, Bradley Morrison, who said the disclosure would,
“result in the FBI’s inability to protect the public from terrorism and other criminal activity because through public disclosures, this technology has been rendered essentially useless for future investigations.”
However, the FBI did not answer questions about its role in states’ open records proceedings.