Rachel Kurzius
Photo by Erin.
The first known court challenge to the D.C. Police’s use of cellphone tracking technology without a warrant is making its way through the judicial system.
The D.C. Public Defender Service filed a motion on February 16 challenging the constitutionality of the technology known as “Stingray,” which mimics a cellphone tower to track a phone’s location and, in some forms of the technology, intercept phone call and text metadata or content. The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation yesterday filed a friend-of-court briefing asking for guidance regarding law enforcement’s use of the technology.
The case in question involves Prince Jones, who in 2014 was convicted of a number of crimes including sexually assaulting and robbing women he met online over the course of two days. In February 2015, he was sentenced to 66 years in prison.
According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, police were able to track Jones “within hours of the second assault,” though it does not mention that they used Stingray technology without a warrant to do so.
The Washington Times explains how MPD found Jones:
After determining the phone was in the general area of the Minnesota Avenue Metro station in Northeast, police deployed a cell site simulator to pinpoint its exact location. Simulators work by mimicking cell towers to trick cellphones to connect to them, enabling investigators to obtain identifying information about the phones and their precise locations.
Citing “exigent circumstances,” specifically that two women had been attacked and another robbed within a 24-hour period, police did not obtain a warrant for use of the device in the Jones case, according to court records.
Two trucks hauling simulators, including one that court records indicate was driven by a Secret Service agent, drove around the area near the Metro station for about 40 minutes while the technology went to work. The simulator eventually zeroed in on Jones, who officers found sitting in his car with his girlfriend outside the station. After officers stopped Jones, they found in his possession the phone used to contact the women, their stolen cellphones and a folding knife.
While Jones’ lawyers tried to block the introduction of evidence police retrieved from his car, Judge Jennifer Anderson allowed its use because the police would have found it either way, according to the Post.
This is the first known time that MPD has acknowledged using the technology in a criminal investigation, according to Arthur Spitzer, the Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of the Nation’s Capital. It’s also the first case in the DC Court of Appeals involving the use of Stingrays, he says.
The issue at hand isn’t only Jones’ privacy, the amicus brief states, but all of the other area cell phones tricked into providing information to the Stingray devices.
“Hopefully, the court will tell MPD they need to get a warrant, and that the warrant needs to set limits on how he device is used,” Spitzer says.
A Vice News report from 2014 found that MPD started purchasing Stingray technology in 2003 to combat terrorism. By 2008, though, when the police got a federal grant to update the tracking devices, “they sought to use it for routine investigations involving drug trafficking and common criminals.” According to the documents obtained by Vice, MPD officers weren’t trained in the devices’ use until 2009.
