Newly published documents show that in July 2008, the Illinois State Police purchased more than $250,000 worth of “covert cellular tracking equipment” from the Harris Corporation. The federally funded gear likely includes a Stingray and related devices that track a phone’s location and can also be used to intercept calls and text messages.

The 110-page set of documents represents yet another puzzle piece in the slowly emerging national picture of how such devices are acquired and used.

The document set also indicates that the Illinois governor’s office signed off on the equipment purchase and authorized an exemption from the “competitive bid process.” It includes a rarely seen Harris contract that uses language meant to keep the Stingray purchase quiet. The documents, which cover a period between 2008 and 2012, were obtained through a public records request and were first published earlier this week by Scott Ainslie, a freelance “data pilgrim” based in the United Kingdom, with help from Heather Akers-Healy

Also earlier this week, the American Civil Liberties Union obtained e-mails from the Sarasota, Florida, Police Department saying that it had outright lied on police reports and depositions about the use of the devices. The agency said instead that location information obtained from its stingrays had come from fictitious “confidential sources.” (This tactic is not terribly unlike the totally made-up “Fuzzy Dunlop” (video) informant from the TV show The Wire, which turned out to be simply a microphone tucked inside a well-placed tennis ball.)

Neither the Illinois State Police nor the Harris Corporation immediately responded to Ars’ request for comment.

No-bid contract

In a March 18, 2008 letter sent from William J. Quinlan, the governor's general counsel to Larry Trent, the director of the Illinois State Police, Quinlan authorized the Illinois State Police's purchase of the devices “for conducting covert investigations.”

“This exception is requested so that the Illinois State Police may purchase components directly from the vendor and decrease the possibility of sensitive information being disseminated inappropriately,” he wrote. “The purchase of this specialized equipment will enhance the capabilities of the [REDACTED] when responding to a request for assistance from law enforcement throughout Illinois.”

He also noted that this purchase was funded by a Department of Homeland Security grant.

In a subsequent letter from Trent to Purchasing Officer Marty Kuhn, the Illinois State Police department was “exempted from the Procurement Business Case process and the competitive bid process." In other words, the agency could purchase from Harris without soliciting bids from other vendors. The governor’s office also did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment.

An invoice dated July 22, 2008 shows that the state spent $254,260 to acquire several items, each of which was redacted on the invoice. Documents from later in 2008 show that the Illinois State Police also spent more than $7,000 to send four named special agents to Harris Corporation headquarters in Florida to attend a “seven-day training class on newly acquired cellular telephone tracking equipment.”

Hush-hush

The document set also contains a curious section in the Harris contract forbidding public disclosure.

It reads:

Neither party will, without the prior written consent of the other party: (a) make any news release, public announcement, denial or confirmation of this Agreement or its subject matter; or (b) in any manner advertise or publish the fact of this Agreement.

Such language is similar to other contracts signed with law enforcement agencies . Other companies working in similar forms of digital surveillance—such as Vigilant Solutions, a license plate reader vendor—also have similar nondisclosure agreements

Brian Owsley, a former US magistrate judge, told Ars that this type of contractual language hinders the ability of the public to check government power.

“Many corporations have non-disclosure agreements covering a myriad of issues and topics,” Owsley, now a law professor at Texas Tech, said. “So on some level, that limits the unquestionability in one manner. On the other hand, there is the transparency concerns that impact these issues of privacy and government surveillance. The public cannot know the full extent of government actions if there is no information allowed to be disseminated by either the government or Harris. I do not have a sense of how this is handled by various states. Again, I think it is driven by the federal government which is the principal funder of the acquisition of this type of technology through [Department of Homeland Security] grants and the like and by Harris for corporate reasons that presumably are related to profit."