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FBI Forces Local PD to Keep Quiet About Stingray Tech Used to Steal Cell Phone Data
Advanced cell phone tracking devices known as StingRays allow police nationwide to home in on suspects or to log individuals present at a given location. But before acquiring a StingRay, state and local police must sign a nondisclosure agreement with the FBI, documents released last week reveal.
The document released by the Tacoma Police Department is heavily redacted — four of its six pages are completely blacked out — but two unredacted paragraphs confirm the FBI’s intimate involvement with StingRay deployment.
The StingRay family of trackers are manufactured by the Harris Corporation, a company with $5 billion in annual revenue and headquarters in Melbourne, Florida. As “cell site simulators,” the trackers trick mobile phones into connecting to a StingRay as if it were a cell tower. This allows police to determine the cell phone’s location, and thus its owner’s.
