In a groundbreaking case recently, a federal judge ruled against a Milwaukee man who was suing the state over the way he was arrested. He was arrested in a completely normal manner; however, the police were able to find him via a device called a stingray. A stingray is a device that can gather information on phones by sending out a signal that mimics a cell tower. This causes phones in the area to attempt to connect to it as they see it as a real tower. Once the device is connected to the stingray authorities are able to use it to gain a wide variety of information. They can use it to see serial numbers and other unique identifying features of the phone. With this information they can then track phones around a local area by picking a specific …show more content…
A different federal judge ruled that if the DEA wishes to use a stingray to bring in a criminal then they must have a warrant to use it [source]. The argument that a lot of people will make when it comes to surveillance is that if you’ve done nothing wrong, then you have nothing to hide. If we apply that same logic to this specific case, then we might as well say that the government should be able to put a unique tracking device on each one of us that we must always carry around. Many people would probably no want to be constantly tracked by the government openly, so why should we be okay with tracking us whenever they want, just without announcing it? We are afforded legal protections for most other private areas in our lives so why should we have almost no rights when it comes to something that we depend on and use every day? The judge in the specific Milwaukee case stated that “A person wanted on probable cause (and an arrest warrant) who is taken into custody in a public place where he had no legitimate expectation of privacy cannot complain about how the police learned his location” This argument doesn’t make much sense if you change it to be about something other than a phone. If the police searched the man’s house without a warrant in order to learn his location, then in court any evidence that they obtained within the house would be thrown out. The judge is pretty much