8/11/2019 Martinezv CPD II Press Release

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CHICAGO POLICE SUED FOR REFUSING TODISCLOSE THE EXTENT OF ITS SPYING ON THECELL PHONES OF CITY RESIDENTS AND VISITORS

The Chicago Police Department was sued today to force release of records showing the extent of

its use of IMSIcatcheror stingrayequipment to secretly trick the cellular phones of Chicago

residents and visitors to transmit sensitive and Constitutionally protected personal information to

the police and whether there are any procedural safeguards in place to protect the publics

Constitutional rights.

Cell site simulators, also known as IMSI catchers or stingrays, masquerade as cellphone towers to obtain

data secretly from nearby cellular user devices. In a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed in June,

Chicago resident and privacy activist Freddy Martinez sued Chicago Police to find out whether the

department had purchased any of this equipment. Records produced by Chicago Police have since

shown that the department has in fact acquired this equipment.

The public has a right to know the extent to which the police are secretly taking information from their cell

phones and whether their Constitutional rights are being protected in the process,said government

transparency attorney Matt Topic of Loevy & Loevy Attorneys at Law, which represents Martinez in the

suit. The Chicago Police Department has refused to produce a single document that would show the

extent this is happening and with what Constitutional safeguards. This plainly violates the Freedom of

Information Act and raises serious Constitutional concerns.

Given the Chicago Police Departments history of illegally targeting political activists for surveillance,

people should be very concerned about the departmentsuse of this equipment, which could be used to

identify people who attend political protests and the people theyve contactedand store that information in

databases for later use, said Martinez. It was only a few years ago that a federal court finally dissolved

the consent decree in the ACLUs suit against the department for years of unconstitutional domesticpolitical surveillance.

Mr. Martinez filed a FOIA request with Chicago Police looking for records showing when, where, how,

why, and by whom Chicago Police deployed this equipment, any court orders allowing it, any policies

governing the deployment, any records discussing the constitutionality of its use, and records showing

what happens to the data that the department obtains using this technology. Chicago Police refused to

produce a single record in response, citing a litany of purported exemptions.

The suit comes only a few months after the Supreme Court acknowledged in Riley v. California that cell

phones are now such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might

conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy. The Court held that police therefore need a

warrant before searching cell phones incident to an arrest, yet Chicago Police have refused to produceany information showing whether they have obtained warrants or other court orders before deploying

IMSI catchers to take information from the cell phones of people who havent even been arrested.

The public ought to know whether the Chicago Police Department is engage d in wholesale violations of

the Fourth Amendment, said Topic.