D.C. police have used secret technology for years to track cellphones without search warrants -- and a man found guilty of sexual assault is now challenging his conviction because he says use of the tool violated his rights.
Since 2003, D.C. police have used cellphone tower simulators known as Stingrays, the Metropolitan Police Department has testified in court. The suitcase-sized devices mimic the signals of the closest cellphone towers. Any cellphone in that area then is redirected to the Stingray, giving the user of the device the ability to determine a suspect's location and more.
"This device was a big secret," said Arthur Spitzer of the American Civil Liberties Union of the Nation’s Capital.
Legal experts say the sexual assault case of Prince Jones is the first time D.C. police have admitted to using the devices, The Washington Times reported.
Jones was found guilty in 2014 of robbing two women he contacted for escort services through Backpage.com and forcing them at knifepoint to perform oral sex on him, the paper reported.
Police learned the phone number Jones used to contact the victims and began tracking the location of his phone without a warrant, Jones' appeal said, according to the Times.
Spitzer of the ACLU said police departments across the country are using Stingrays without warrants, violating people's privacy.
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"The Stingray enables them to track you even when you're inside your house, inside your office, places that police are not supposed to go into without a warrant," he said.
D.C. police and U.S. attorneys offices declined to comment.
The Metropolitan Police Department signed an agreement with the FBI in 2012. According to that agreement, the FBI can ask local police and prosecutors to dismiss cases rather than disclose information about Stingray technology. Congress is raising questions about that power of the FBI.
"I think in this non-disclosure agreement, the [Department of Justice] is foreseeing the exact problem we're having right now," said civil rights attorney Ari Wilkenfeld, who is not involved in Jones' case. "It's going to be a misuse, and when it is, you're going to have to dismiss your cases, as opposed to revealing any information about the technology."
D.C. police paid for the Stingrays using a grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. They were intended to be used to fight terrorism, according to records submitted in court by the ACLU.
"This technology was given to them by the federal government for emergency circumstances, not, there’s a bank robber running down the street and we’re worried he might rob somebody else. This was for terrorism," Wilkenfeld said.
D.C. Councilmember Mary Cheh (Ward 3), who is a constitutional law scholar, said lawmakers need to keep up with technology.
"The ability of the government or have access to our phone data, our texts, our location, to be able to track us from a point in time to whenever, is almost unlimited," she said.
