You Can’t Hide From The Police If They Have Stingray Tracking Device

Recently, the Milwaukee, Wisconsin Police Department had to admit in court that they had used a Stingray to track a suspect prior to his arrest and jailing. – What many would say is a blatant violation of the 4th Amendment.

The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution provides, “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

The ultimate goal of this provision is to protect people’s right to privacy and freedom from arbitrary governmental intrusions.  Private intrusions not acting in the color of governmental authority are exempted from the Fourth Amendment. – Cornell University Law Online.

“Thanks to EFF and the ACLU, the government has finally admitted it secretly used a Stingray to locate a defendant in a Wisconsin criminal case, United States v. Damian Patrick. Amazingly, the government didn’t disclose this fact to the defendant—or the court—until we raised it in anamicus brief we filed in the case.”

As we wrote in a previous article on Stingrays and ISIS, aka cell-site simulators, act as a fake cell-phone tower. They can provide an exact location of where a particular cell phone is located without the user knowing.

“Stingrays are especially pernicious surveillance tools because they collect information on every single phone in a given area—not just the suspect’s phone—this means they allow the police to conduct indiscriminate, dragnet searches—in some cases on up to 10,000 phones at one time. They are also able to locate people inside traditionally-protected private spaces like homes, doctors’ offices, or places of worship and can be configured to capture the content of communications.”

Read more at Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF): https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/eff-and-aclu-expose-governments-secret-stingray-use-wisconsin-case