https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/04/21/the_long_arm_of_the_law_reaches_into_your_cellphone.html
Bob Goodlatte (R) represented Virginia’s 6th Congressional District, served as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and is senior policy adviser of the Washington, D.C.-based Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability.Alex Marthews is the national chair of Restore the Fourth, an advocacy organization dedicated to privacy, surveillance reform and the Fourth Amendment.
Even if you’ve done nothing wrong, the government may be tricking your cellphone into divulging your movements, while seeing who you’ve texted and called.
Since 1995, local and state governments, as well as federal agencies, have been using “cell site simulators,” commonly known by the genericized brand name “stingrays.” These portable devices collect data from the cellphones of anyone who happens to walk into range of its signals.
Stingrays work by mimicking cellphone towers, sending signals to trick phones in a targeted area into transmitting the locations and identifying information from bystanders. Stingrays represent one of the largest bulk data collection programs in the United States, operating at all levels of government.
According to a 2018 American Civil Liberties Union investigation, at least 75 agencies in 27 states and the District of Columbia owned stingrays, with the potential to compromise the privacy of hundreds of millions of Americans. When asked about stingrays, many law enforcement officials obfuscate. A police department in Florida admitted in emails to hiding its use of a stingray-type device. Often, the manufacturers of these devices, and sometimes the FBI, require police departments to sign non-disclosure agreements. Federal law enforcement will often push for dismissal of cases rather than reveal specifics about how these devices are used. In 2018, the ACLU reported that 14 federal agencies were known to utilize stingrays, including IRS, ICE and the FBI.
The decentralized nature of this technology makes investigation difficult. Hundreds of Freedom of Information Act requests would need to be filed to uncover the scope of their use – and even then, past experience suggests these requests would often be ignored.