Jon Swedien

JSWEDIEN@NEWS-LEADER.COM

JEFFERSON CITY — Law enforcement should have to obtain a warrant before tracking people by their cellphones, computers or tablets, according to a state senator who wants to write the requirement into Missouri law.

Under current law, police can use devices known as cell site simulators to track people by their cellphones or similar devices without a warrant. But Sen. Will Kraus, R-Lee's Summitt, said that is a violation of state residents' Fourth Amendment rights.

Kraus, who has sponsored a bill in the Missouri General Assembly to restrict the practice, said using cell site simulators should come with the same legal requirements that come with using a wire tap.

“Obviously, I want police to be able to do their jobs, but we need to be sure our civil liberties are protected," Kraus said in a news release.

Kraus' bill received a hearing before a Senate panel on judicial issues during the past week. The committee could act on the bill soon.

Neither the Springfield Police Department nor the Greene County Sheriff's Office use cell site simulators, according to spokeswomen from both offices. Cell site simulators are often referred to as StingRay, which is a brand name.

The use of the phone trackers has received national attention and sparked controversy in some cities.

A USA Today investigation found that numerous police departments across the nation have used the devices to locate perpetrators of routine street crimes but frequently concealed that fact from the suspects, their lawyers and even judges. In the process, they quietly transformed a form of surveillance billed as a tool to hunt terrorists and kidnappers into a staple of everyday policing.

The suitcase-sized tracking systems, which can cost as much as $400,000, allow the police to pinpoint a phone’s location within a few yards by tricking the phone into interacting with the device like a cell tower. In the process, police can intercept information from the phones of nearly everyone else who happens to be nearby, including innocent bystanders. They do not intercept the content of any communications.

“There are laws defining how law enforcement has to use surveillance methods, such as phone tapping, that preserve citizens’ due process,” Kraus said in the release. “They have to get a warrant to use those technologies. We should apply that same standard to new surveillance methods police are implementing.”

The Missouri Sheriffs' Association supports the law, said Executive Director Mick Covington.

In his news release, Kraus said his bill would provide some emergency exceptions to the warrant requirements, such as in the case of kidnappings or reported suicide attempts.

Nationally, the controversy regarding the devices has been amplified by the secrecy shrouding their use. Local police agencies that have used devices on loan from federal agencies at times have refused to even acknowledge they were deployed, citing non-disclosure agreements.

In Baltimore, USA Today obtained a police surveillance log and matched it with court files to paint the broadest picture yet of how those devices have been used. The records show that the city's police used stingrays to catch everyone from killers to petty thieves, that the authorities regularly hid or obscured that surveillance once suspects got to court and that many of those they arrested were never prosecuted.

Defense attorneys assigned to many of those cases said they did not know a stingray had been used until USA Today contacted them, even though state law requires that they be told about electronic surveillance.

Prosecutors said they, too, are sometimes left in the dark.

"When our prosecutors are made aware that a detective used a cell site stimulator, it is disclosed; however we rely upon the police department to provide us with that information," said Tammy Brown, a spokeswoman for Baltimore's State's Attorney. "We are currently working with the police department to improve upon the process to better obtain this information in order to comply with the law.”

Baltimore is hardly alone. Police in Tallahassee, Florida, used their stingray to track a woman wanted for check forgery, according to records provided to the ACLU last year. Tacoma, Washington, police used theirs to try to find a stolen city laptop, according to records released to the website Muckrock. Other departments have acknowledged that they planned to use their stingrays for solving street crimes.

As that surveillance became more common — and more widely known — state and federal lawmakers moved to put new limits on the circumstances in which it can be used. In addition to state laws that require the police to get a search warrant before they can use a stingray, Congress has considered a similar rule for the federal government.

Federal officials have said stingrays allow them to track dangerous criminals.

“It’s how we find killers,” FBI Director James Comey said last year. “It’s how we find kidnappers. It’s how we find drug dealers. It’s how we find missing children. It’s how we find pedophiles.”

USA Today contributed to this story.