At its March 7 meeting, the Fremont City Council approved the department’s request for the device, called a cell site simulator. The request was listed on the council’s consent calendar, which contains items considered routine enough to be collectively approved with a single vote.
The device imitates a cell site tower, making cellphones within range relay information to it such as “relative signal strength and general direction,” according to city staff reports. That allows police to focus on a particular phone whose user they’re trying to find.
According to public records obtained by The Center for Human Rights and Privacy and shared with The Argus, the cell site simulator is manufactured by Harris Corp. under the brand Hailstorm. It’s typically mounted in a vehicle and may include mobile devices that work in tandem with the main unit.
Cell site simulators are also commonly known by other model names, such as Stingray, or Triggerfish.
Their ability to invade people’s privacy have made the devices controversial.
“Stingrays are capable of dragnet surveillance that can reveal sensitive information about our location and associations,” said Matt Cagle, a technology and civil liberties policy attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union.
“For too long, law enforcement across California and the United States were using Stingray devices in secret and without adequately informing the public or the courts about what was going on,” Cagle added.
The device connects with all cellphones in a given area and seeks a unique identifying code for the specific one it is programmed to find. Once it finds that phone, it locks onto it and rejects all others, according to the staff report.
The device “is useful when deployed to assist fugitive apprehension efforts, to locate at-risk people, to locate missing children, or to provide search and rescue support in natural disasters and emergencies, the staff reports state. They add that the device won’t collect emails, contacts, text messages and other data while in use, and any information about other phones pinged during Hailstorm’s search will be regularly purged.
Fremont police Capt. Sean Washington said in an interview he understands the public’s concern about privacy and noted the device won’t be an “everyday thing.” He added that in most situations, a search warrant will be required to activate it.
“These are significant cases that we feel pose a significant risk to the public,” Washington said. “It all goes back to safety.”
Fremont police do not own the device. It was obtained by the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, in conjunction with Fremont and Oakland police departments.
The device, a vehicle to mount it in and training add up to a $535,000 cost, according to public records.
Craig Chew, the district attorney’s assistant chief of inspectors, said in an email to colleagues the joint effort between Fremont and Oakland police and the district attorney’s office raised $355,000 — $100,000 from a Homeland Security grant, $170,000 credited to Oakland for trading in older cell site technology and $85,000 from general operating funds, though it’s unclear from which agency.
The three agencies then jointly applied for a $180,000 Bay Area Urban Area Security Initiative grant in 2014 to cover the remaining costs.
Hailstorm is managed by the district attorney’s office and available for use by any law enforcement agency in the region. With the city council’s approval, Fremont police agreed to follow the district attorney’s policy when using Hailstorm.
Mike Katz-Lacabe, a member of the group Oakland Privacy, which had input on the county policy regarding cell site simulator use, told the council that although the staff report states the device “does not have the capacity to intercept or capture communications, emails, texts, contact lists, images or other data” from the phones tracked, it could do all that with a software upgrade.
The district attorney’s policy calls for an annual report detailing how many times the device has been used and for what general purpose.
Cagle said those reports will be instrumental in helping the community decide whether such tools are effective.
He said he hopes more communities will consider laws that help elevate the discussion and restrictions involving surveillance technology, similar to an ordinance passed by Santa Clara County last year.
“Surveillance technology should be subject to an open, robust debate that includes more than just a simple consent calendar item,” Cagle said.
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