Cell-tracking case appealed to full US 7th Circuit Court
MILWAUKEE — A dissenting opinion by a federal appeals court judge on police use of secret cellphone tracking technology has convinced a Milwaukee man to take his case a step further.
Attorneys for Damian Patrick filed a petition this week asking for a rehearing in front of the full U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, after losing a split decision in November to the court’s three-judge panel. It’s the first time the use of cell tower simulators, known as stingrays, has reached a federal appellate court, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported (http://bit.ly/2hiTeVT ).
“It is time for the stingray to come out of the shadows, so that its use can be subject to the same kind of scrutiny as other mechanisms, such as thermal imaging devices, GPS trackers, pen registers, beepers, and the like,” 7th Circuit Judge Diane Wood wrote in her dissenting opinion. “Its capabilities go far beyond any of those.”
Stingrays are suitcase-sized devices that imitate a cellphone tower and draw signals from all nearby cellphones, not just the targeted number. It allows police to zero in on the phone’s location, down to a specific apartment in a building. The phones don’t have to be in operation, and some versions of the technology can even intercept content, like texts and calls, or pull information stored on the phones.