Lawmakers Demand to Know Which Agencies Use Stingray Technology

In a letter, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D-MD), and the top two members of the panel's IT subcommittee, Reps Will Hurd (R-TX) and Robin Kelly (D-IL), asked 24 key agencies to share their policies for using Stingrays, a secretive cell-phone-tracking device that allows it to scoop up identifying information from thousands of mobile devices at once in order to pinpoint the location of a target.

The Justice Department has announced it was using stingrays, and in Oct, documents showed that even the Internal Revenue Service is using the surveillance devices, making it the 13th federal agency known to operate them, according to data from the American Civil Liberties Union. The letter Chairman Chaffetz and his fellow committee members sent Nov 9 asks for details about data-retention policies, Stingray use at the state and local level, nondisclosure agreements associated with Stingray use, and details about any alleged misuse of the technology. The signers also asked for an inventory of Stingray devices in use by each of the 24 agencies and the cost of each device.