Prosecutors in St. Louis, Missouri, dropped a criminal robbery case to avoid revealing details of a controversialletterof surveillance mobile τηλεφώνων (StingRay), a defense attorney claims.
Η St Louis Post-Dispatch reports that the state withdrew too many accusations against three defendants a day before the planned police filing revealing how they managed to collect data from the cell phones of the accused.
Lawyer Megan Beesley, who represented one of the defendants, told the newspaper that he was convinced that the charges were withdrawn so as not to force police officers to disclose information about telephone tapping from secret devices known as the StingRay .
Prosecutors question this claim. But if it is true, it will add extra data to previous categories that want law enforcement agencies to own and use the StingRay surveillance program.
The devices StingRay it has been a "hidden secret" of the authorities for several years. The suitcase-sized devices allow authorities to impersonate a cell phone station to collect geographic and other information from cellphones. The police in this case are said to have been instructed by the FBI to keep their use secret devices, even at the expense of criminal cases.
The St Louis affair, however, is one of the few cases that reveals this public policy policy. Of course, we do not believe that this report will bring results (remember the Snowden case), but it is good to know.
