The City of San Diego has paid at least $365,000 to purchase the Stingray, a powerful and controversial surveillance tool that can locate and track cell phones, according to city documents that were recently released as part of an ongoing lawsuit.

The purchase included software and other equipment for the device, which law enforcement officials have gone to some lengths to keep secret. The documents were released to the First Amendment Coalition, which last year sued the city under the California Public Records Act, demanding more information on how the powerful technology is used.

Many of the documents are either partially or completely redacted, but they shed more light on the city’s purchase and use of the device that has previously not been released.

Two state laws that went into effect this year, which required more disclosure about when the device is used, have lifted some of the mystery surrounding the Stingray. But the documents show the breadth of secrecy the city was operating under after it purchased the device in approximately 2010.


The released documents include non-disclosure agreements signed with manufacturer Harris Corp. and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The documents prohibit police from disclosing information about the device and how to operate it in search warrants, affidavits, grand jury hearings, “in response to court ordered disclosure” or any part of a civil or criminal trial — without written approval by the FBI.

If the police learn that a prosecutor or judge plans to use information about the device, beyond what is described as the “evidentiary results” from deploying the Stingray, they must tell the FBI and allow the agency to intervene in the case.

Another provision says that if the FBI requests, the police will “seek dismissal of the case” instead of being required to provide information about the device and how it operates, the agreement reads.

“Letting the public know what the city had, and the extent of the secrecy they had agreed to, was an important part of our case,” said Kelly Aviles, the lawyer for the coalition.


A police department spokesman, asked to comment on the use of the device, said the department utilizes “legal technology that is available to us to protect the community we serve. We strive to keep San Diego one of the safest large cities in America.”

The Stingray is a cell-site simulator. About the size of a shoe box, it works by tricking cellphones into connecting with it by acting like a cell tower. That allows police to determine the location of a phone.

In doing so the device also captures information about all cellphones in an area — including those of people not targeted or suspected of a crime. It can capture calls emails, text messages and other data, but in a court filing accompanying the release of the documents, the city said its Stingray is only configured to capture a phone’s unique identifying number.

Still the power of the technology — it can pinpoint a phone to within two meters — and its indiscriminate sweeping of all cellphones in an area have troubled privacy advocates and civil libertarians.


The documents include a “model” search warrant that San Diego police used when they wanted to deploy the Stingray to find cell phones and track incoming and outgoing calls — but that does not disclose to the judge that the police will use the device.

Instead it refers only to using pre-cellphone era technologies such as a pen register and trap-and-trace orders, which capture data from phone companies. The Stingray allows police to capture that information directly over the air.

Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, said omitting that information weakened the oversight judges give when deciding whether to approve a warrant.

“If a judge doesn’t know the particular technology is, he or she can’t decide if the search is going to be reasonable under the constitution,” Scheer said. “The Stingray is a considerably more invasive tool than some of the other surveillance tools they use that form for.”


Deputy Public Defender Frank Birchak , whose office represents the vast majority of defendants in local courts, agreed.

“We’d say, yes, the judge should absolutely be made aware of this,” Birchak said.

The nondisclosure agreement bans the police from publicizing the device to the media, the public or other government agencies, and says it will notify the FBI if there is a request to disclose how the device works under the Freedom of Information Act or through court proceedings so the agency can “seek to prevent disclosure through appropriate channels.”

Birchak could not identify cases in which his office has been informed a Stingray was used — but that could have been because the nondisclosure agreements prohibited that.


“As far as we can tell at no time have we been told, ‘Yes, we used a Stingray,’” he said. “It’s very concerning that there are conditions where a contract with a vendor alleges to trump constitutional rights.”

Last year the city, in response to Public Records Act requests from The Union-Tribune, the coalition and other media, released only a few documents, including a single invoice showing an expenditure of $33,000. It said it was prohibited from releasing more information by the Department of Justice.

The new documents include a partially redacted purchase order from August 2010 showing the city paid $365,266.88 for the device. Another document, a redacted city memo from November of that year, said the money came from State Homeland Security Grant Program Funds.

Last year the Union-Tribune found a 2009 grant application for federal stimulus funds in which the city sought $738,000 for a Stingray and four handheld units. The application was approved, but it’s unclear if the money was part of the $365,000 purchase.


The November memo also outlines about $45,000 of projected costs for operating the system, though the individual line items are blacked out. The memo, whose author is also redacted, notes that “during the purchase process there were significant cost overruns that were not anticipated. The cost overruns required canceling other equipment for the SHSGP ‘09 grant to pay for the Harris equipment.”