The Chicago Police Department lost a motion to dismiss the cellular tracking case raised agains them. A Cook County judge denied the motion and ordered the department to turnover all documents related to the case.
According to the Chicago Tribune, Judge Kathleen Kennedy, the Cook County judge who denied the motion to dismiss the lawsuit, rejected the argument that the Police Department's use of "cell site simulators" was exempt from public disclosure. In response to this, she ordered all records pertinent to the case to be sent over so she can inspect and decide whether the Police Department's concern about disclosure has any merit.
The judge's ruling was a result of lawsuit last year by a local activist and self-described "techie" named Freddie Martinez. Invoking the "Freedom of Information Act", Martinez requested documents from the Chicago Police Department related to the purchase of Stingray simulators and how this data was stored and collected.
The request was ignored by the Police Department. An affidavit was submitted containing an FBI agent's statement that if the information was open to the public, some undesirable elements might attempt to thwart the technology. Likewise Harris Corporation, the devices manufacturer, released an affidavit stating that any information revealed about the device violates trade secret rules.
Freddy Martinez is a 28 year-old Chicago-area resident and works in the software industry, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. He brought about the lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department together with his attorney, Matthew Topic.
Topic is an attorney for the firm Loevy & Loevy which is well known for successfully suing the city for alleged police misconduct. He believes that the police could be using the device to build a database of protesters and monitor them as serious First and Fourth ammendment concerns. He considers this possible abuse of the technology's immense power at the hands of the police as the rationale for the lawsuit.
ArsTechnica offers a brief overview of how these devices function. Cell-site simulators, also known as "stingrays" acts like a cell tower which is placed in between your cell phone and the actual cell tower. This "dummy" cell tower can intercept any data transmitted from a target phone before passing said data to its intended cell tower. The immense power of these devices causes interception of data from other phones within the vicinity of the target phone, a serious violation and of individual's privacy.
Privacy-minded legal scholars like Nathan Freed Wessler of the American Civil Liberties Union lauded Judge Kennedy's decision. Mr. Wessler told ArsTechnica by email: "Today's ruling sends the message that information about police use of invasive surveillance technology can only be kept secret with very good reasons."
He also lambasted the FBI for leaning on local police departments to hide basic information about thse devices from judges, defense attorneys and the public. According to him, submitting cookie-cutter affidavits in lieu of actual warrants was the reason for keeping these devices secret. He ends his email saying: "We are glad that this court has joined courts in Buffalo, Baltimore, Tallahassee, and elsewhere in rejecting the government's reliance on dubious arguments to justify its corrosive secrecy."
In light of this development, The Chicago Police Department did not immediately respond to the request for comment.
