For several months, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has been filing public records requests with Florida law enforcement agencies seeking information on the use of International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) locators. The most common IMSI locator is Stingray, which works by disguising itself as a legitimate mobile phone tower in order to collect precise location information and, in some cases, entire conversations.
In following up on its public records requests, the ACLU has uncovered violations of open government laws, “including an incredible seizure of state records by the US Marshals Service, which is part of the Justice Department.”
The Sarasota, FL police department initially told the ACLU that it had responsive records to the ACLU public records request, including “trap-and-trace” authorization paperwork for a detective to use Stingray. This raised the interest of the ACLU because “trap and trace orders are typically used to gather limited information about the phone numbers of incoming calls, not to track cell phones inside private spaces or conduct dragnet surveillance.” Moreover, pen register/trap-and-trace orders do not require a probable-cause warrant and have been used to route around legitimate warrant requirements. This is part of the way the US National Security Agency (NSA) attempted to justify parts of its warrantless domestic surveillance programs.
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court (FISC) opinion and order on pen register/trap-and-trace applications.
The police department had set up an appointment for the ACLU to examine the trap-and-trace authorization paperwork and then cancelled, on the grounds that the US Marshals Service had claimed the paperwork and blocked its release. The ACLU was told that the Marshals Service had “deputized the local officer, and therefore the records were actually the property of the federal government.”
Amazingly, the county court told the ACLU it didn’t have any copies of the paperwork sought, in direct violation of legal requirements that the court properly maintain its judicial records.
The ACLU has filed an emergency motion for a temporary injunction prohibiting the police department from transferring any more files to the Marshals Service and an order requiring production of the paperwork sought.