Illinois seeks legislation on phone tracking technology

Have you heard about suitcase-sized cell-site simulators, also known as Stingrays? These are Law enforcement departments' potent devices that work as cell towers and track phone locations and have the capability to capture data for hundreds or thousands of cell phones in a particular neighborhood - not just the cellphone police are after.

Obviously like any other powerful technology, these devices are now raising privacy concerns and inspiring legislation to restrict how police can use the technology in criminal investigations.

Illinois is one of the states around the US trying to set rules for the same. "It's a pretty unusual technology because it's highly powerful but not very targeted," says Sen. Daniel Biss, a suburban Chicago Democrat sponsoring legislation to require that law enforcement gets search warrants before using the device. The Senate had cleared the bill last month with unanimous support and it passed its first House committee last Tuesday.

The bill aims to prohibit police from using data to investigate individuals not included in a search warrant and would require them to delete data from people who are not subject to an investigation within three days.

Last year, the federal Justice Department had set guidelines for its agencies on how to use Stingrays, including requiring search warrants except in emergencies and deleting data every month.

"We're just looking to say Illinois law enforcement agencies must comply with the same basic constitutional protections that the federal government needs to comply with when utilizing this powerful technology, which has the ability to monitor citizens en masse," said Rep. Ann Williams, another Chicago Democrat sponsoring the bill in the House.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, California, Colorado, Wisconsin, and Virginia are among the 12 states that have passed laws addressing the technology and Congress has a pending bill on the same. Last week, Connecticut lawmakers also sent the governor legislation that restricts the devices' use.

Barring the privacy issues, the cell-tracking devices have been immensely helpful to security authorities in hundreds of cases. For example, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Seth M. Stodder told a congressional committee in October that immigration officials used a Stingray to locate a 6-year-old girl who was being held hostage by smugglers in Arizona.

New York City police have used the technology extensively - more than 1,000 times since 2008, according to data released in February by the New York Civil Liberties Union - and have captured suspects in rapes, robberies, and killings. Similarly, Baltimore police claim to have used the technology more than 4000 times in the past nine years but hit a legal snag last month when a Baltimore judge dismissed key evidence in a murder case because it was obtained by using a Stingray.

Analysts and critics of the devices, however, worry that without formal legislation, law enforcement can use the stored information to build databases that track individuals' patterns of behavior, like where someone attends political meetings, what doctors they see or what churches they attend.