Disir
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- Sep 30, 2011
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Florida Cops' Secret Weapon: Warrantless Cellphone Tracking | Threat Level | Wired.comPolice in Florida have offered a startling excuse for having used a controversial stingray cellphone tracking gadget 200 times without ever telling a judge: the devices manufacturer made them sign a non-disclosure agreement that they say prevented them from telling the courts.
The shocking revelation came during an appeal over a 2008 sexual battery case in Tallahassee in which the suspect also stole the victims cellphone. Using the stingray which simulates a cellphone tower in order to trick nearby mobile devices into connecting to it and revealing their location police were able to track him to an apartment.
During recent proceedings in the case, authorities revealed that they had used the equipment at least 200 additional times since 2010 without disclosing this to courts and obtaining a warrant.
Although the specific device and manufacturer are identified in neither the one court document available for the 2008 case, nor in a video of a court proceeding, the ACLU says in a blog post today that the device is likely a stingray made by the Florida-based Harris Corporation.
Harris is the leading maker of stingrays in the U.S., and the ACLU has long suspected that the company has been loaning the devices to police departments throughout the state for product testing and promotional purposes. As the court document notes in the 2008 case, the Tallahassee Police Department is not the owner of the equipment.
The ACLU now suspects these police departments may have all signed non-disclosure agreements with the vendor and used the agreement to avoid disclosing their use of the equipment to courts.
The police seem to have interpreted the agreement to bar them even from revealing their use of Stingrays to judges, who we usually rely on to provide oversight of police investigations, the ACLU writes.
That's crafty.