The ACLU is releasing records today obtained from law enforcement agencies across Florida about their acquisition and use of sophisticated cell phone location tracking devices known as “Stingrays.” These records provide the most detailed account to date of how law enforcement agencies across a single state are relying on the technology. (The full records are available here.) 
 
 The results should be troubling for anyone who cares about privacy rights, judicial oversight of police activities, and the rule of law. The documents paint a detailed picture of police using an invasive technology — one that can follow you inside your house — in many hundreds of cases and almost entirely in secret. 
 
 The secrecy is not just from the public, but often from judges who are supposed to ensure that police are not abusing their authority. Partly relying on that secrecy, police have been getting authorization to use Stingrays based on the low standard of “relevance,” not a warrant based on probable cause as required by the Fourth Amendment. 
 
 Records Show Widespread Stingray Use 
 
 Last year, we sent public records requests to three dozen police and sheriffs’ departments in Florida seeking information about their use of Stingrays, also called “cell cite simulators” because they mimic cell phone towers and force phones in the area to broadcast information that can be used to identify and locate them. The records we obtained document millions of dollars spent purchasing the technology and show their use in many hundreds of investigations in every corner of the state. 
 
 As we revealed last year, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement has spent more than $3 million on Stingrays and related equipment since 2008. But it isn’t keeping the technology to itself. The FDLE has signed agreements with at least 11 local and regional law enforcement agencies allowing them to use the FDLE’s Stingrays and to share them with neighboring jurisdictions. (Though the version of the sharing agreement released by the FDLE is partially redacted, a local police department near Tampa provided an unredacted copy.) 
 
 Use of the FDLE’s Stingrays has been extensive. In a May 2014 email, the FDLE identified a staggering 1,835 uses of cell site simulator equipment, likely reflecting deployment in both state and local investigations throughout Florida. 
 
 The Tallahassee Police Department (TPD) provided the most extensive information about a local agency’s use of Stingrays on loan from the FDLE, including a detailed list of more than 250 investigations in which it used Stingrays from September 2007 through February 2014. Although law enforcement agencies often justify their purchase of Stingrays—and the excessive secrecy surrounding their use — on homeland security grounds, the Tallahassee list reveals not a single national security-related investigation. Robbery, burglary, and theft investigations represent nearly a third of the total, followed by “wanted person” investigations, and then a laundry list of other run-of-the-mill offenses. The list also shows that the TPD allowed other police departments to access Stingrays, even crossing state lines into Georgia on at least five occasions. 
 
 Technology Hidden From the Courts 
 
 In many of the investigations, police never sought a court order authorizing Stingray use. In others, they sought a court order on a low "relevance" standard, but not a warrant based on probable cause. Perhaps most troublingly, the records indicate a pattern of excessive secrecy, including concealment of information that should appear in investigative files and court filings. For example, the TPD provided a sample of judicial applications and orders it says were used to justify Stingray use, but not one of them contains a single mention or description of Stingray technology. This suggests that judges weren’t being fully informed about what they were approving. 
 
 The TPD also released the full investigative files from 11 cases where the agency used Stingrays.* But officers’ notes and other documentation in the files never once mention Stingrays or provide descriptions of their use. Instead, there are only fleeting references that would likely be inscrutable to a defense attorney or judge not already on the lookout for signs of covert Stingray surveillance. Two files mention use of “electronic surveillance measures” to track a cell phone. Another says only that “Confidential intelligence” indicated the location of a phone. A fourth states that “Inv Corbett [sic] arrived and determined that [the tracked] telephone was on the second floor of the apartment.” We know from a court transcript that the ACLU successfully petitioned to unseal last year that Corbitt is the TPD officer who operates Stingrays for the department. 
 
 The Tallahassee Police aren’t alone in obfuscating references to Stingray use in case files and court documents. As we have previously reported, for example, police in the Sarasota area were instructed by the U.S. Marshals Service to eliminate descriptions of Stingray cell phone tracking in court filings and replace them with the cryptic phrase “received information from a confidential source regarding the location of the suspect.” 
 
 A new Washington Post article, based partly on the records obtained by the ACLU, provides further detail about how Stingray secrecy functions — and malfunctions — in Tallahassee. In one case detailed by the Post, prosecutors opted to offer a defendant a no-jail plea deal instead of revealing details about the Stingray as part of court-ordered pre-trial discovery. As we’ve seen elsewhere in the country, our justice system can’t properly function when judges and defense attorneys are kept in the dark about covert electronic surveillance by police. 
 
 Excessive Secrecy Persists 
 
 Below we detail our findings about Stingray use in other departments across the state, including records showing hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenditures and information on the number of cases in which they have been used. But for all these disclosures, many details about Stingray use in Florida are still shrouded in secrecy. 
 
 Several agencies refused to comply with Florida's open records laws by properly providing documents. Some acknowledged that they had responsive records, but refused to release them. The Brevard County Sheriff’s Office, for example, denied our records request in full, partly relying on a “non-disclosure agreement or requirement” with a “federal agency.” (We know the FBI has been making local agencies sign non-disclosure agreements before buying Stingrays; a fully redacted copy of the FBI agreement is likely contained in the pages released by the FDLE. The FDLE also released a copy of a non-disclosure agreement with the Harris Corporation.) The Sheriffs’ Offices in Broward and Pinellas Counties issued similar denials. Police Departments in Pembroke Pines and Port St. Lucie failed to respond to the ACLU’s request at all. 
 
 Other agencies tried to withhold records, but apparently forgot that they had already released documents on the web. The Miami Police Department responded only that it had “No departmental orders or standard operating procedures covering ‘cell site simulators,’” but did not reply to a follow-up request for other kinds of records. Documents posted on the city’s website, however, show that Miami spent tens of thousands of dollars buying and upgrading Stingrays in 2008. 
 
 And in the City of Sunrise, the police at first refused to confirm or deny whether any responsive records existed. After the ACLU pointed out that Sunrise had already posted purchase records for Stingray devices on its public website, the city saw fit to send the ACLU copies of those already-publicly available documents . . . and a request for $20,000 to cover the expense of searching for additional records. 
 
 Unanswered Questions 
 
 Not a single department produced any policies or guidelines governing use of Stingrays or restricting how and when they could be deployed, suggesting a lack of internal oversight. And no department provided evidence that it gets warrants before using the technology. 
 
 Indeed, records from Tallahassee and elsewhere indicate that police have not been getting warrants. That must change. In a strong ruling last year, the Florida Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment requires police to get a warrant before asking a phone company to track a cell phone user’s location in real time. The logic of that opinion should apply equally to cell phone tracking using Stingrays. And because Stingrays sweep up information not just about suspects, but also bystanders, the need for robust judicial oversight is all the greater. 
 
 The documents we obtained add to the growing picture of surreptitious Stingray surveillance by local police around the country. By shining a light on police practices, we hope to help bring constitutional violations and a culture of impunity to an end. 
 
 Details on Stingray Use by Departments Across Florida 
 
 Records from elsewhere in Florida show how use of the technology and secrecy about it has proliferated. Following is what we found about particular departments across the state: 
 
 * In consideration of the privacy interests of people named in the investigative files produced by several law enforcement agencies, we are releasing only those pages of the files that shed light on Stingray use, and are redacting personally identifiable information. ||||| The Berkshire Manor Apartments in Tallahassee, one location where the StingRay surveillance device was used extensively by the Tallahassee Police Department. (Phil Sears/AP) 
 
 The case against Tadrae McKenzie looked like an easy win for prosecutors. He and two buddies robbed a small-time pot dealer of $130 worth of weed using BB guns. Under Florida law, that was robbery with a deadly weapon, with a sentence of at least four years in prison. 
 
 But before trial, his defense team detected investigators’ use of a secret surveillance tool, one that raises significant privacy concerns. In an unprecedented move, a state judge ordered the police to show the device — a cell-tower simulator sometimes called a StingRay — to the attorneys. 
 
 Rather than show the equipment, the state offered McKenzie a plea bargain. 
 
 Today, 20-year-old McKenzie is serving six months’ probation ­after pleading guilty to a second-degree misdemeanor. He got, as one civil liberties advocate said, the deal of the century. (The other two defendants also pleaded guilty and were sentenced to two years’ probation.) 
 
 McKenzie’s case is emblematic of the growing, but hidden, use by local law enforcement of a sophisticated surveillance technology borrowed from the national security world. It shows how a gag order imposed by the FBI — on grounds that discussing the device’s operation would compromise its effectiveness — has left judges, the public and criminal defendants in the dark on how the tool works. 
 
 
 
 
 
 That secrecy, in turn, has hindered debate over whether the StingRay’s use respects Americans’ civil liberties. 
 
 “It’s a terrible violation of our constitutional rights,” asserted Elaine Harper, McKenzie’s grandmother, who raised the young man. “People need to know — the public needs to know — what’s going on.” 
 
 The StingRay is a box about the size of a small suitcase — there’s also a handheld version — that simulates a cellphone tower. It elicits signals from all mobile phones in its vicinity. That means it collects information not just about a criminal suspect’s communications but also about the communications of potentially hundreds of law-abiding citizens. 
 
 The Tallahassee police used the StingRay or a similar device in more than 250 investigations over a six-year period, from mid-2007 through early 2014, according to a list of cases compiled by the Tallahassee Police Department and provided to the American Civil Liberties Union. 
 
 That’s 40 or so instances a year in a city of 186,000, a surprisingly high rate given that the StingRay’s manufacturer, Harris Corp., has told the Federal Communications Commission that the device is used only in emergencies. At least 48 state and local law enforcement agencies in 20 states and the District of Columbia have bought the devices, according to the ACLU. 
 
 The secrecy surrounding the device’s use has begun to prompt a backlash in cities across the country. In Baltimore, a judge is pushing back against the refusal of police officers to answer questions while testifying. In Charlotte, following a newspaper investigation, the state’s attorney is reviewing whether prosecutors ­illegally withheld information about the device’s use from defendants. 
 
 In Tacoma, Wash., after a separate newspaper investigation found that judges in almost 200 cases had no idea they were issuing orders for the StingRay, the courts set new rules requiring police to disclose the tool’s use. The state legislature is weighing a bill to regulate police use of the equipment. 
 
 The FBI and Tallahassee police say that the device is used only with an appropriate court order and that they do not collect the content of calls or text messages. The FBI also said it retains only location data that is relevant to an investigation and immediately discards all other data. 
 
 So far, there is virtually no case law on how the Fourth Amendment — which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures — should apply to this technology. 
 
 Pot purchase gone wrong 
 
 The robbery, judging from police reports, legal documents and interviews, was small-time. 
 
 At about 6 p.m. on March 4, 2013, McKenzie, then 18, and two friends met a young man named Jamal Williams at a local Taco Bell. They had set up a deal to buy some marijuana from Williams, whom McKenzie had first met at a party, with the intent of robbing him of the dope. 
 
 During the robbery, one of McKenzie’s buddies pulled what appeared to be a 9mm handgun out of his pocket, pointed it at Williams and demanded “everything you got.” 
 
 The other friend removed what looked to be a shotgun from the trunk of a car and leveled it at Williams. “I’m not scared to put a hole in you,” he said, Williams recalled. 
 
 Both weapons were BB guns. But they scared Williams enough that he gave the men the pot, left behind his iPhone and fled in a car driven by a friend who had escorted him to the Taco Bell. 
 
 That evening, Williams reported to police that he had been robbed of cash and his phone when he tried to buy marijuana from some dealers he did not know. Later he admitted that he, in fact, was the seller and assessed the stolen pot’s value at $130. 
 
 The police had little to go on beyond vague descriptions of the three men, a license-plate number and a cellphone number that McKenzie had provided. A check of the tag number turned up nothing. McKenzie had not given his real name. 
 
 The day after the robbery, the police obtained a court order from a judge to authorize Verizon to hand over data collected from cell towers that would show the approximate locations where the phone in question had been used. 
 
 Two days after the robbery, shortly after 4 a.m., several police officers drove to a house at 3197 Springhill Rd., on the south side of town, and set up surveillance. 
 
 About 6 a.m., McKenzie left the house, got into his car and pulled away. The officers tailed him past Sam’s Tires and Repairs, past the Family Dollar store, past Jerusalem Baptist Church, past Tony’s Gas. Three and a half miles later, they pulled him over. The youth, a senior looking to graduate, had been on his way to school, which began at 6:45 a.m. 
 
 The police found some marijuana and zip-top bags in the car. They detained McKenzie and took him to the police station. He confessed, giving police the names of his two friends and showing investigators where they lived. All three were charged with robbery with a deadly weapon. 
 
 Tracing a phone’s location 
 
 Months passed. The case dragged along. 
 
 In November 2013, after McKenzie’s original lawyer dropped out, his case was assigned to a public defender, Carrie McMullen. Around that time, the attorney for one of the co-defendants began to wonder: How did the police figure out that McKenzie was at 3197 Springhill Rd. that morning? 
 
 McMullen’s office hired a lawyer with technology expertise. John Sawicki, the expert, produced a map on which he plotted all the locations provided by Verizon, and they clumped in three different areas of town. 
 
 Cell-tower data can show general geographical areas where a phone was used, but “they will not tell you he’s in House X,” Sawicki said. “That’s how imprecise it is.” 
 
 In March, the defense team deposed police investigator Robert Newberry. The lawyers tried to get Newberry to explain how the police zeroed in on 3197 Springhill Rd. He mentioned the cell-tower records and then, under probing, acknowledged that they had not been sufficient on their own to locate the suspect. 
 
 He said a “Sergeant Corbitt” in the department’s technical operations unit had identified the phone’s location. “He would have to tell you how he got to that,” Newberry said, referring to Christopher Corbitt, who handles electronic surveillance operations. 
 
 There were other questions about whether the police had reasonable suspicion to pull McKenzie over. The descriptions Williams gave of the suspects were vague, and in fact, none closely matched McKenzie’s appearance. 
 
 The descriptions fit “two-thirds of the young black males living on the south side of town,” Sawicki said. 
 
 Newberry could not fully explain how Corbitt determined the phone’s location. “I can’t address it because I don’t know the magic behind it,” he said. 
 
 In April, the defense team deposed Corbitt. He told the attorneys that he turned up the address on Springhill Road by running phone numbers that the suspect’s phone had dialed through a subscription database, called Accurint, that helps law enforcement agencies locate individuals through data such as phone numbers, property records and court records. 
 
 But how did he know that the phone was in the house at 6 in the morning? The phone was a “burner” — one not registered under McKenzie’s name. 
 
 “We do have specific equipment that allows us to . . . direction-find on the handset, if necessary,” Corbitt said. 
 
 “What is that, and how does that work?” McMullen asked. 
 
 “I can’t go into that,” he said. “Due to [a] nondisclosure agreement with the FBI, we’re not able to get into the details of how the equipment operates.” 
 
 He acknowledged that the device was a cell-tower simulator. 
 
 He also acknowledged that the device, whose model name he could not give, was used to “assist in locating or determining the person in possession” of the cellphone, and that it could elicit signals from a target’s phone even when the phone was not in use. 
 
 “It is not nearly as invasive or as sinister as it is sometimes characterized to be,” he said. 
 
 “I so wish that I could tell you how this equipment operates, because I think I could put so many people at ease,” Corbitt said. “Unfortunately, I am not able to do that.” 
 
 He said that if the defense wanted more specific information, then he had “a specific protocol” to follow requiring him to notify the FBI and the Justice Department. 
 
 The Tallahassee police declined to comment for this article. 
 
 ‘100 percent’ reliable 
 
 In June, in response to a motion for public access by the ACLU, the state released a transcript from a closed court hearing in 2010 relating to a Tallahassee rape case in which Corbitt testified that he had used a cell-site simulator to identify a suspect in an apartment complex. “In essence, we emulate a cellphone tower,” he said. “We force that handset to register with us. We identify that we have the correct handset and then we’re able to — by just merely direction-finding on the signal emanating from that handset — we’re able to determine a location.” 
 
 He noted that the equipment “is evaluating all the handsets in the area.” 
 
 “Using portable equipment,” he said, “we were able to actually basically stand at every door and every window in that complex and determine, with relative certainty . . . the particular area of the apartment that that handset was emanating from.” 
 
 He said the Tallahassee police began using the device in the spring of 2007. From that point until August 2010, he said, the police had used it “200 or more times” to locate a cellphone. 
 
 How reliable was it? “Truthfully,” he said, “100 percent.” 
 
 In September, McMullen drew up a motion to suppress the evidence obtained against McKenzie prior to his arrest, alleging that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated by the use of the StingRay. She argued that the police had not obtained a warrant based on probable cause to use the device. 
 
 “By scooping up all manner of information from a target cellphone, as well as nearly all cellphones in the general area, a StingRay device engages in exploratory rummaging,” she wrote. 
 
 McMullen also argued that the order the police did obtain not only failed to meet the requirements of a warrant but was also obtained without telling the judge that it would be used to operate a StingRay. 
 
 Then, in October, McMullen sought a subpoena to compel Corbitt to show the device in court. In November, Florida Circuit Court Judge Frank Sheffield held a hearing on the issue. 
 
 The state’s attorney, Courtney Frazier, argued that details of the equipment’s operation were protected from disclosure under a law enforcement exception to the state open-records law. 
 
 Sheffield broke in. “What right does law enforcement have to hide behind the rules and to listen in and take people’s information like the NSA?” he said. 
 
 Frazier protested that the information about the device was sensitive and that disclosure could inhibit the police’s ability to catch criminals. 
 
 “Inhibiting law enforcement’s rights are second to protecting mine!” Sheffield thundered, gesturing with both hands and fixing his gaze on the prosecutor. 
 
 On Dec. 2, Sheffield signed the subpoena forcing Tallahassee police to show the device they used. 
 
 Two days before Corbitt was due to show up with the device, McMullen received notice of the plea deal from the prosecutor. She had never gotten such a sweet deal on a case. 
 
 The defense attorneys were disappointed that they would not see the device, but they couldn’t refuse the plea bargain. 
 
 “How do you not take it?” Sawicki said. “How do you take these kids’ future away?” 
 
 Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.
– A device police can use to pinpoint a suspect's location with what some say is 100% reliability may just sound like the latest cool tool in a cop's catch-a-criminal arsenal. But the surveillance instrument used by the Tallahassee PD since 2007 is worrying the ACLU, judges, and citizens who say it's a violation of civil rights and the Fourth Amendment, the Washington Post reports. These so-called cell-site or cell-tower simulators (also known as IMSI catchers and often sold under the StingRay brand) trick cellphones within range into connecting to them as they would to an actual cellphone tower; police may then potentially access location and communication data from any of the "fooled" phones, as per the Post. However, when the device is flicked on, service to other phones may be disrupted, batteries drain more quickly, and info is culled from not just the suspect, but also other phones in range. The ACLU reports that Florida law enforcement agencies have spent more than $3 million on this equipment since 2008, and it's spread beyond the Sunshine State: The organization has been able to ID 48 agencies in 20 states and DC that own the simulators. Although the Tallahassee PD and FBI say the unit can only be used with a court order (and they don't collect call content or text messages with it), judges, attorneys, and the public are creeped out by the secrecy: Cops often cite an FBI "nondisclosure agreement" and refuse to explain how the technology works, saying it will compromise the device's efficacy, the Post notes. However, a public defender who took on the case of an 18-year-old busted via the device for robbery called the "scooping up [of] all manner of information from a target cellphone, as well as nearly all cellphones in the general area" nothing more than "exploratory rummaging." Click for the full report.