Source: CityLab
Major cities throughout the U.S. have spent millions on mobile surveillance tools—but there are still few rules about what happens to the information they capture.
The majority of these departments have at least one of two main types of digital-age spy tools: cellphone interception devices, used to covertly track or grab data from nearby mobile devices, and cellphone extraction devices, used to crack open locked phones that are in police possession and scoop out all sorts of private communications and content.
Access to such devices was once largely limited to intelligence agencies like the NSA and the FBI; their acquisition by local police departments is a relatively recent, less-discussed part of a wider police militarization trend. With only a few clicks, police can now map out individuals’ social networks, communication timelines, and associates’ locations, based on the data captured by these surveillance tools.
As a tool for crime fighting, such intelligence gathering can be powerful indeed: An interception tool could, for example, help police track down a kidnapper; an extraction device could then quickly identify their network of contacts. But the prospect of handing this military-grade spy gear to local law enforcement has inspired concern, in part because of the lack of uniform regulatory safeguards to protect citizens’ privacy.
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