Stingray cell-phone trackers have been used here

Do law enforcement agencies in the Rochester area ever use stingrays, the term for high-tech surveillance devices that can scoop up cell-phone data surreptitiously? We asked that question more than a year ago and didn't get a clear answer.

Now there's a partial answer, and it's yes: Information obtained by lawyers for the New York Civil Liberties Union indicates that two agencies in our area have used the controversial cell-trackers three times in recent years.

There likely are other instances that have yet to be made public.

The small, portable stingrays are taken to a given location, where they mimic a cell tower. This tricks cell phones within range to connect to them so that identifying information and the location of those phones can be collected. The devices also can track the numbers called or texted by a particular phone that's in range, and companion devices allow users to listen to calls.

"Stingray" is the brand name of a particular cell-phone tracker manufactured by Harris Corp., though the term has come to be applied generically to a spectrum of similar tools made by Harris and other companies.

Police might use them to look for a criminal suspect or find out who he is calling or texting.

One concern about their use is the same as for license-plate readers, the digital cameras that police and others use to capture geolocated images of the plates on passing cars and trucks. Stingrays and LPRs can be used to track a specific person or investigate a specific crime, but in so doing, police also gather up the data of innocent passers-by.

Another concern is that stingray use is shrouded in secrecy. Federal authorities require local police who buy the devices to sign a confidentiality agreement in which they pledged not to reveal information about the stingrays or even acknowledge that they have them.

This non-disclosure tactic extends to the courtroom, where law enforcement officials have been accused of obscuring the fact they used a stingray in given criminal investigation. This increasingly leads to confrontations with defense lawyers and judges who look askance at police witnesses refusing to talk about investigative techniques. (The Baltimore Sun just published a piece on stingrays and courtrooms there, and here's a Washington Post story about similar issues in Florida.)

A year-and-a-half ago, my colleague Jon Hand asked our two largest law-enforcement agencies -- the Monroe County Sheriff's Office and the Rochester Police Department -- if they owned and used stingrays.

The sheriff's office said no, but the city police declined to answer and denied a Freedom of Information Law request by saying that revealing the information sought would "disclose investigative techniques." You can infer whatever you like from that in regard to RPD's ownership of a stingray.

Our sister television in Buffalo, WGRZ, had better luck. After a long FOIL-based fight with Erie County officials and the sheriff's office there, the station was given records indicating the sheriff had spent $350,000 on two stingrays. The station aired a fine, detailed report last May.

But the sheriff's office initially wouldn't answer any questions about the devices. So the New York Civil Liberties Union got involved, filing a FOIL of its own and suing the sheriff's office when the FOIL was denied. The civil liberties group prevailed in court, and earlier this week released the documents it had obtained under judicial order.

Perhaps predictably, the group was horrified by what it found. "These records confirm some of the very worst fears about local law enforcement's use of this expensive and intrusive surveillance equipment," NYCLU Staff Attorney Mariko Hirose was quoted as saying.

The findings are quite interesting. For one thing, they got a copy of the non-disclosure agreement that the ECSO signed. For another, it received basic reports on each of the 47 instances in which the agency had used its stingrays.

Those documents revealed that Erie County deployed its devices on behalf of other police agencies all the time -- including once for the East Rochester Police Department in 2011 and twice for the US Marshals Service in Rochester, in 2012 and 2013.

Erie County Sheriff Tim Howard has agreed to talk to WGRZ this week, the station reported Saturday.

The stingrays were used to assist the Marshals' Rochester-based violent felony warrant squad, whose job is to find fugitive criminal suspects, the documents indicate. A spokesman for the Marshals Service, Drew Wade, said he could not confirm the use of any specific "sensitive equipment and techniques" that the office uses for fear of tipping off suspects.

Despite making several phone calls, I wasn't able to connect with East Rochester Police Chief Steve Clancy to ask what his agency used Erie County's stingray for, and whether it helped. A rare homicide had occurred in the village a day or two prior to the device's deployment there, so perhaps it was related to that investigation.