There has been a lot of buzz in the media lately about a product called the Stingray from Harris Corporation. The “Stingray” itself is a trademarked product. It has since come to be used as a generic term, like Xerox or Kleenex. Harris is notoriously secretive about the capabilities of its devices and generally won’t talk to the press about their capabilities or deployments. A Stingray device tricks all cell phones in an area into electronically identifying themselves and transmitting data to police rather than the nearest phone company’s tower. Because documents about Stingrays are regularly censored, it’s not immediately clear what information the devices could capture, such as the contents of phone conversations and text messages, what they routinely do capture based on how they’re configured or how often they might be used. In fact, earlier this month, journalist Beau Hodai and the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona sued the Tucson Police Department, alleging in court documents that police didn’t comply with the state’s public-records law because they did not fully disclose Stingray-related records and allowed Harris Corp. to dictate what information could be made public. “I don’t see how public agencies can make up an agreement with a private company that breaks state law,” said David Cuillier, the director of the University of Arizona’s journalism school and national expert on public-records laws. “We can’t have the commercial sector running our governments for us. These public agencies need to be forthright and transparent.”
If you think that’s bad, keep reading. Earlier this month, the ACLU filed a motion for public access request that asked for documents and information regarding Stingray use by roughly 30 Florida law enforcement departments. Of the various published responses, one noteworthy reply was from the city of Sunrise, Florida. Through its lawyers, Sunrise officially denied the request, explaining that they would neither confirm nor deny “whether any records responsive to the request exist and, if any responsive records do exist, cannot and will not publicly disclose those records.” This is rather perplexing because the ACLU pointed out in a blog post that the city of Sunrise has already published an invoice from Harris Corporation on their own website on March 13th, 2013, showing that the city paid over $65,000 for a Stingray. That document clearly states in all-caps on each page that “disclosure of this document and the information it contains are strictly prohibited by Federal Law.”
Representatives from Harris Corporation have, not surprisingly, declined to comment or elaborate on how the company’s agreements comport with open records laws. Court documents in Hodai’s case in Arizona show Harris’ agreement required the Tucson city government not to “discuss, publish, release or disclose any information” about its products without the company’s written consent. The agreement also required the city to contact Harris when it receives public-records requests about a “protected product,” like a Stingray, so that the company can “challenge any such request in court.” Scary stuff my friends.
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