Advertisement
Advertisement

City’s cell-phone sniffer cost $738K

The ‘Stingray II’ works even when GPS is turned off

Share

A grant application for federal stimulus funds submitted by San Diego police in 2009 sought $738,000 to purchase a cellphone surveillance system that can track cell phones even when customers turn off the phone’s GPS.

Details of the purchase and the device, known as a “Stingray II” and manufactured by the Harris Corporation of Florida, are outlined in the application.

The city didn’t release the grant documents when news organizations and the public access advocacy group the First Amendment Coalition requested information on the purchase and use of the device this year under the Public Records Act.

WATCHDOG

Instead the city handed out a single page, heavily-redacted purchase order for $33,000. It said it was exempt from releasing more information because to do so would reveal details about security or intelligence gathering.

On Wednesday, the city was sued by the coalition for not disclosing information about the tracking system.

The Stingray device acts as a cellphone tower and tricks cell phones into connecting with it, thereby allowing police access to information from the phones.

After all the fuss about public records requests, it turns out the city’s grant application was available online all along, and was spotted by the Bay Area digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation.

According to the grant application, the city sought $3 million for equipment and salaries. It was the largest component of an overall $6.4 million grant submitted for 17 other local agencies for funds made available by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, commonly known as stimulus funds.

The city described the device as “a portable electronics platform capable of tracking the signal of cellular telephones even if the person has disabled GPS capabilities.” It said it could track 99 percent of all phones in use.

The grant money would be used to cover the purchase of the device and “four handheld tracking units as well as a 40 hour training course for four operators,” according to the grant application.

The application was dated June 23, 2009. It was approved on July 13 of that year.

The First Amendment Coalition had requested all information related to the “possession and use” of the device by the department under a Public Records Act in October.

Peter Scheer, the executive director of the coalition, said his group should have “absolutely” received the grant document. Its request to the police department specified “grant applications” among other categories of documents.

“We think there are lots of things we should have gotten,” he said. “They regard even the fact of a grant application as classified information.”

The city cited a provision of the law that allows information covered under legal privileges to be withheld under certain state and federal laws.

In a statement, the City Attorney’s office on Wednesday said it was prohibited from disclosing more information about the device by federal law enforcement because to do so “would potentially endanger the lives and physical safety of law enforcement officers and adversely impact criminal and national security investigations.”

Watchdog

Advertisement