Alerts

UPDATE February 10, 2022: Bill died in committee.

House Bill 519 would ban the warrantless use of stingray devices for location tracking or to sweep up electronic communications in most situations. It is currently under consideration in the House Judiciary B Committee.

The ACLU describes stingrays as “invasive cell phone surveillance devices that mimic cell phone towers and send out signals to trick cell phones in the area into transmitting their locations and identifying information. When used to track a suspect’s cell phone, they also gather information about the phones of countless bystanders who happen to be nearby.”

The NMA supports this measure since use of stingrays raises many privacy and civil rights issues. Learn more here. Controlling abusive use of these devices through greater oversight (warrant requirements) is an important step in checking the spread of the surveillance state.