![]() #SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY COURT SMART SEARCH SIMULATOR#In 2012, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department acquired a so-called Stingray, a cell-tower simulator, capable of receiving cell phone signals in a targeted area, including those specifically sought by investigators as well as those of others using or simply carrying switched on cell phones within the range of the simulator who are not suspected of any criminal activity.įor the first 18 months the device was in its possession, the Sheriff’s Department made indiscriminate use of the Stingray, utilizing it over 295 times without seeking any sort of warrant whatsoever for its employment. The second round is now under way, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation having filed suit against the San Bernardino County Superior Court, seeking to obtain the information contained in and upon which those warrants were issued, and challenging the court’s routine practice of sealing those search warrants, in virtually all cases indefinitely. That first lawsuit has now been dismissed. The first round in the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation’s effort to shed light on the monitoring of cell phone and smart device communications of both criminal suspects and members of the general public who are not known to be engaged in any criminal activity involved a lawsuit brought against the sheriff’s department which resulted in the plaintiff obtaining the basic identifying information pertaining to the warrants relating to the department’s electronic monitoring. Though privacy advocates have hailed what they said were marginal improvements in how the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department’s blanket interception of cell phone communications are being disclosed to an unsuspecting public that may otherwise have no inkling its private communications are being compromised, those reforms have not been comprehensive enough, those advocates maintain, and legal efforts to limit law enforcement’s reach into people’s lives are ongoing.Īt issue is whether law enforcement agencies in general and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department in particular, will be able to continue to engage in the wholesale vacuuming and interception of cell phone communications based on warrants and affidavits for their issuance that can be indefinitely withheld from disclosure. Privacy Group Sues To Have Court Divulge Sheriff’s Cell Phone Diversion Warrants ![]()
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