Michigan State Police Used Forfeiture Funds to Upgrade Its Stingrayby Tim CushingTechdirt Oct. 30, 2015 |
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There are a few ways law enforcement agencies acquire cell tower spoofers. Very rarely do agencies pay for these expensive devices themselves. (Meaning with their funds drawn from their own departments. Obviously, no government agency is self-funded.) In most cases, funding in whole or in part is obtained from the DHS -- something nearly any agency can obtain simply by checking [X] BECAUSE TERRORISM when applying for a Homeland Security grant. Agencies are also using seized funds from asset forfeiture programs. The Michigan State Police used both methods to buy and upgrade its Stingray, according to documents obtained by the ACLU. For nearly a decade, the Michigan State Police has had secretive cellphone tracking devices that were bought to fight terrorism but instead are used to solve everyday crimes, internal documents show.But that didn't stop the state police from telling the DHS that it was going to use the device to beat back terrorists. The documents acquired by the ACLU indicate the state police paid Harris Corp. $206,500 in 2006 for equipment that was “vital to the war on terrorism” and allows “the state to track the physical location of a suspected terrorist.”Seeing as burglary and fraud aren't nearly as fund-worthy as actual terrorism, the agency apparently decided against going to the DHS well twice. The second round of funding was internal, but padded by plenty of external "donors." In 2013, the state used asset forfeiture funds to pay Harris $593,450 for “surveillance and countersurveillance equipment and supplies,” records show.The money isn't going to waste though. While the state police may have trouble finding enough "serious" crime (documents show 82 arrests and the location of six missing persons… but still no terrorism) to deploy the device against, it apparently needs very little prompting to put it to use. According to the records, the state police fire up the Stingray (now most likely a Stingray 2.0, aka, Hailstorm) once every three days. Whether further upgrades will be this easy for the state to obtain remains to be seen. For one, this document release, along with last year's discovery of Oakland County (MI) Sheriff's Department's previously-unmentioned Stingray, has placed the use of these surveillance devices under additional scrutiny by legislators. Additionally, the state government recently passed an asset forfeiture reform bill. While it didn't go as far as many had hoped (thanks to the objections of law enforcement lobbyists), the new law does raise the level of evidence needed to process a forfeiture from "a preponderance" (which sounds much weightier than it is) to "clear and convincing." It also requires additional reporting from law enforcement agencies on the seizure and distribution of funds and property. That being said, some legislators still don't see a problem with law enforcement agencies doing whatever they want with surveillance equipment they don't want to talk about. State Rep. Kurt Heise, R-Plymouth Township, chairman of the House Criminal Justice Committee, said McMillin’s bills [introducing a warrant requirement for Stingray use] would have “tied the hands of police.”There's a company man. Heise, of course, speaks with authority on the subject of Stingrays, law enforcement burden and the ripeness of the issue. After all, he had no clue about the technology or who had it until someone else pointed it out to him. Heise said he wasn’t aware the state police have the technology and isn’t concerned about it. |