For decades, law enforcement agencies across the country have utilized Stingrays to locate and track individuals in various investigations, from local police in Annapolis trying to locate a suspect who stole 15 chicken wings from a delivery man to ICE searching for undocumented immigrants in New York and Detroit. However, until a few years ago, the existence of this technology was shrouded in secrecy. It turns out that the FBI went to great lengths to keep the public unaware of the existence of simulators of cellular installations, requiring state and local law enforcement to sign confidentiality agreements before purchasing the technology, a practice that they still refuse to confirm or deny maintaining. Not only did these agreements prevent officers from disclosing the purchase or use of the technology to the public, but they also compelled them to conceal it from judges and defense attorneys in court proceedings.
This was even the case with the use of a Remote Surveillance Trailer in Truckee CA.In cities across the country, local police departments and other law enforcement agencies are installing automated license plate readers that create databases with location information for individual cars (and their drivers). These readers can be mounted on the side of a busy road to scan all cars that pass by or on the dashboard of a police car, allowing officers to cross and scan all license plates in a parking lot. In Washington, D.C. In Los Angeles, more than two dozen law enforcement agencies use license plate readers to collect more than 160 million data points. This surveillance is not targeted and records the movements of any car that passes by.
In cities that have joined the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force or that have signed another data sharing agreement, federal agents have location information at their fingertips. After the ACLU, journalists and others successfully forced the publication of copies of confidentiality agreements by requesting public records, judges and legislators began to learn about the surveillance, which was previously secret, and criticized the FBI for imposing such draconian secrecy. The EFF has sued DHS for more information about that program, but in the meantime, as with redacted documents, information about its use in surveillance remains frustratingly opaque. But we do know that other branches of the federal government, namely the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), are monitoring with drones across the U.
We believe that the FBI and the DOJ should discuss the proper interpretation of section V of the Consensual Monitoring Guidelines and that the FBI should issue clarifying guidance. The Ecclesiastical Committee's exposure to the FBI's abuses of COINTELPRO resulted in a series of reforms, including laws designed to regulate government surveillance and internal guidelines (Attorney General guidelines) that limited the FBI's investigative authority and detailed the rules governing law enforcement operations. As noted above, the MIOG requires FBI special agents to request authorization to conduct consensual non-telephone monitoring on Form FD-759. The public has a right to know if the FBI continues to require law enforcement agencies to hide information about invasive surveillance technology. Yes, now that the Supreme Court has ruled that the government must obtain a court order to use its usual surveillance technique, it has now apparently decided that it's easier to keep everything a secret. During the Bush administration, the Attorney General's Guidelines underwent four separate changes, all of which gave the FBI more surveillance powers with less oversight.
To complement the guidelines, the FBI imposes detailed administrative and management controls over the use of consensual surveillance, both telephone and non-telephone. The new guidelines explicitly authorize the surveillance and infiltration of peaceful defense groups before demonstrations, and do not clearly prohibit the use of race, religion or national origin as factors to initiate evaluations.
