The very first article I wrote for SecureThoughts was an article on Stingray devices. In case you weren’t around then, Stingray is a nasty little surveillance tool. Masquerading as a cellphone tower, your cellphone will connect to a Stingray device automatically. While it’s connected, the Stingray can track you as you wander within its range, which can be up to a four-block radius. Advanced models can intercept phone conversations, text messages, and any files that are sent to your device. More importantly, the metadata captured by the Stingray device can help to track you down, even after you leave its perimeter. Lastly, while it’s become easier and easier for criminals to get their hands on Stingray devices, the most frequent users of Stingray are law enforcement.

Obviously, Stingray devices occasion a lot of bile from the civil liberties crowd. Why wouldn’t they? It’s impossible to use a Stingray to capture data on only one person, which makes the device a pretty clear fourth-amendment breaker. “Standing in the wrong four-block area,” is not an activity that should trigger an invasive search of one’s mobile device.

The months since my first column came out have contained numerous revelations about the extent of Stingray’s misuse.

• In October, the Department of Homeland Security released its policy on the use of Stingray devices in response to a Congressional hearing. They promised to keep using Stingray only in “exceptional circumstances,” and will now request warrants before using Stingray devices.
• You might think it makes sense for the DHS to have Stingray devices, but what about the IRS? According to an invoice obtained by The Guardian, the IRS now possesses several types of intercept devices. What they’re using them for, and whether they’re asking for warrants before using them, however, is completely unknown.
• Lastly, some kindly soul released the entire catalog of Stingray-based surveillance equipment that’s now available for purchase by law-enforcement officials. This list includes intercept-devices that are available for mounting on drones and fixed-wing aircraft.

Again, you might think that only big federal agencies–the DHS, the IRS (again, seriously?), and the FBI–would need, or even be able to acquire Stingray-type devices. But you’d be wrong. Just as small-town police departments have inherited matériel leftovers from the War on Terror, such as armored personnel carriers, high-powered rifles, and even grenade launchers, they’ve also been purchasing the same high-powered surveillance gear as their big-brother agencies.

Case-in-point is the city of Anaheim, CA, which is the smallest city known to possess not only a Stingray device, but also a similar device known as a Dirtbox. The Dirtbox is materially similar to a Stingray in terms of its capabilities, but it’s designed to be mounted on a plane. The U.S. Federal Marshalls were the first federal law enforcement agency to use a Dirtbox in this capacity, and by mounting it on a low-flying aircraft making careful turns, they were able to harvest cell-phone numbers from an entire city in a matter of hours. Where did the Anaheim PD use theirs? Over Disneyland, the most magical place on Earth.

As stated earlier in the article, new government policy requires that large federal agencies procure warrants before deploying Stingray-type devices. A loophole in this policy means that local law enforcement doesn’t have to seek a warrant, however. A recently-passed state law in California sought to close that loophole, but that law didn’t take effect until last month.

In order to preserve the safety and privacy of the American people, and continue to honor the Fourth Amendment, other states across the country must follow California’s example. Stingray technology is simply too powerful to be used unaccountably. Think I’m exaggerating? When US Marshals used plane-mounted Dirtbox technology, they did so from five major metropolitan airports. Based on a Wall Street Journal report, the locations of these airports and their flight patterns provided authorities with “a flying range covering most of the U.S. population.” (Emphasis mine).

Therefore, unless you were out of the country when that surveillance program occurred, it is a virtual certainty that your phone was surveilled by an unaccountable U.S. government agency. Now, at the very least, that agency must request some kind of rubber stamp before putting your phone through its dragnet. Local police forces, however, have no such compunction, and that’s really worrisome. Most local PD don’t need any equipment more sophisticated than a couple of squad cars and a Taser. When left to their own devices, however, they’ll gladly go out and buy inappropriately powerful equipment which, in the best case scenario, they never use. In the worst case scenario, these tools are used in spurious police shootings or to violently quash civil unrest. We need to pro-actively prevent our local police forces from getting their hands on sophisticated surveillance gear. Otherwise, we’ll all find ourselves living in a municipal dictatorship.