The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) received a civil complaint from civil liberties organizations asking the federal agency to investigate Baltimore Police Department’s use of cellphone tracking devices. She said at one point that the devices did not transmit on the wireless spectrum – which experts dispute. In some cases, stingrays can intercept calls and text messages.
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According to Ars Technica, the Stingray’s effects on 911 calls were unproven until recently, when several Canadian law enforcement agencies admitted they could only run the devices for three minutes at a time in order to avoid disrupting emergency service and breaking local telecom laws. But the policy does not apply to state and local agencies. But the machines also sweep up data from innocent bystanders in the suspect’s vicinity, raising privacy concerns.
“The public is relying on the Commission to carry out its statutory obligation to do so, to fulfill its public commitment to do so, and to put an end to widespread network interference caused by rampant unlicensed transmissions made by BPD and other departments around the country”, the groups say in the complaint.
“CS simulators mimic cell towers to force nearby cellphones to connect to them, but because they are not real cell towers and are not actually connected to the phone network, CS simulators then preclude phones connected to them from completing calls”.
The FCC official said the commission is reviewing that issue.
The police department declined to comment. In 2014, it warned the public in an advisory that “it is illegal to use a cell phone jammer or any other type of device that blocks, jams or interferes with authorized communications”.
The Justice Department changed its policy a year ago to require federal law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before deploying cellphone-tracking devices.
The complaint asks the FCC to consider whether the heavy use of the devices constitutes operation without a license – a violation of FCC rules – and whether the conduct of the police constitutes harmful interference with mobile networks.
The groups argue that surveillance using the devices also undermines people’s free speech rights and describe the use of Stingrays as an electronic form of the intrusive police practices described in the scathing Justice Department report on the police department’s pattern of civil rights violations.
The Baltimore Police Department “has no license whatsoever”, it adds.
“Where BPD focuses its policing power, it also focuses its surveillance technology – including CS simulator equipment – and residents in targeted neighborhoods therefore suffer disproportionate harms”. In light of the Justice Department report, he said, “the Federal Communications Commission can not allow a device as powerful as a cellphone interceptor to operate in obscurity”.
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A Maryland court threw out evidence obtained via stingray, but police have argued before the legislature that the data only includes unique identifiers, and is not saved.
