Electronic surveillance

The U.S. Department of Justice Clearly Knows How Creepy Cell Phone Surveillance ‘Stingrays’ Are

Because stingrays imitate cell phone towers, any phone targeted by them will transmit all of its data to and from the stingray instead of an actual tower, allowing the government (or whoever else) to intercept and listen in on anything sent to or from that phone. They also allow police to more precisely track people by locking on to their cell signal.

In the past, some court rulings have deemed stringray use by police as a violation of the Fourth Amendment, and the devices remain legally dubious. Often, the state will go to great lengths such as dropping individual criminal cases to hide the fact that it was using secretive surveillance and stingray technology as part of an investigation. As CityLab reported last year, the devices are becoming more common among local police forces who may be using them for warrantless mass surveillance.

One of the reasons Sen. Wyden is so interested in stingray surveillance? Concerns that stingrays may interfere with phone performance, especially emergency calls to 911. While Sessions’ DOJ insisted that bystander’s phones are barely affected by stingray activity, they’ve been (ahem) stingy with the details on how they know that to be the case.