Secret Service cleared to track cellphones absent warrant

Thursday, October 22, 2015
By Paul Martin

Feds OK’d for Stingrays, minus 4th Amendment

CHERYL CHUMLEY
WND.com
Oct. 22, 2015

Secret Service agents are now allowed to use cellphone-tracking technology, the devices known as Stingrays, without having to obtain warrants from a court, a Homeland Security official told Congress in a hearing about the federal law enforcement division’s new policy.

Assistant secretary Seth Stodder said the devices, which don’t capture telephone call conversations or text messages, would allow Secret Service agents to better protect the president and high-ranking political officials if agents don’t have to go through the Fourth Amendment process of obtaining a judge’s signature to approve the tracking of a specific person or suspect, the Associated Press reported.

The Fourth Amendment prohibits the government from performing unreasonable searches and seizures and also requires government entities to obtain a warrant, signed by a judge, that shows probable cause.

Stodder said the Secret Service’s new policy is akin to one the Justice Department unveiled in September giving the FBI the ability to use Stingrays without a warrant in certain circumstances. Specifically, Stodder said feds would have to get a warrant from a judge except in emergency “exigent circumstances” when time doesn’t allow.

By way of example, he spoke of the recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement rescue of a 6-year-old kidnapping victim using Stingray technology.

But Stodder also said the Secret Service would be able to use Stingrays absent warrants in “exceptional circumstances,” too, AP reported. In other words, Secret Service agents could bypass probable cause standards for tracking and surveillance if they received direct approval from “executive-level personnel” who work within their own agency, or for the U.S. attorney’s office in various jurisdictions around the United States.

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