Law enforcement agencies may need to get an arrest warrant soon before using cell phone simulators, often referred to as stingrays. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and Rep. Ted Lieu of California tabled a new bill this week to end the no-guarantee use of stingray trackers to protect citizen privacy. That is good news.
Wait a minute, what are stingrays?
Stingrays act like cell towers, but aren’t. Instead, they are used by law enforcement agencies to track people down. In the United States, Stingray Phone Trackers are used by a number of local law enforcement, state police, and federal agencies such as the FBI.
Generally, police or other law enforcement agencies drive a stingray in their car or truck through a particular neighborhood. When the stingray passes cell phones, the phones connect to it thinking it is a cell phone tower. The idea is to find a specific phone or person and track that person’s whereabouts and sometimes even call history, messages and data.
Why are stingrays a problem?
The concern is that stingrays aren’t just chasing one person. They are random and keep track of all nearby cell phones. This means that the data of ordinary people will be collected alongside the data of the intended target. This is a topic for data protection officers.
Imagine law enforcement gaining access to your location history, call history, and messages without an arrest warrant. Mind you, you are not committing any crimes; You just go about your business. However, many believe that law enforcement agencies have no right to collect such data from ordinary citizens without their knowledge.
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There is also a security problem. Because stingrays trick phones into connecting to them, a phone can be connected to a stingray when it is needed to make an emergency call. Imagine being unable to call 911 because your phone was tricked into connecting to a law enforcement stingray. Stingrays have the potential to endanger life.
“Cell phone simulators have been around for far too long in a kind of legal no man’s land,” says Wyden. “Our bipartisan bill ends the secrecy and uncertainty surrounding stingrays and other cell phone simulators and replaces them with clear, transparent rules about when the government can use these invasive surveillance devices.”
What impact will the bill have?
The bill calls for law enforcement at all levels to get an arrest warrant before using stingrays, and calls for issuing judges to be made aware of the potential side effects such as disrupting emergency calls.
The bill would also require that the data collected by the devices from bystanders be minimized. It would give those illegally monitored the right to take action and could include fines of up to $ 250,000 for illegally using stingrays. Some states have already passed similar laws. This law would cover all uses of stingrays.
“[Stingrays] can collect a huge amount of metadata and content from a variety of devices at once, ”said Lieu. Lieu pointed out that stingrays have been used against BLM protesters and others who are exercising their First Amendment rights.
Wyden has been trying to control the use of stingrays since 2016.
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The invoice is required
Officially known as the Cell Site Simulator Warrant Act, the bill is welcome, although some say it is long overdue.
The police have been using stingrays for years. In one case, law enforcement officers put a stingray on a plane and flew over Washington, DC to look for a suspect. The stingray soaked up the data from thousands of people who did not know they were being monitored.
Should this bipartisan law pass, people’s cell phone use will become a little more private. The way it should be.
