On February 9th 2017, officers from the Portland Police Bureau in Oregon shot and killed 17 year old Quanice Hayes. Hayes was unarmed, and had told officers as much. Want to get records involving this shooting, or any of the six officer-involved shootings the PPB had during the years 2014 and 2015? Be ready to cough up some cash just to get your request processing.

With a New York Judge upgrading the warrant requirement for a cell site simulator from probable cause to eavesdropping, it is important to take a look back at our census and the data researchers have compiled about these invasive surveillance tools.

About a month ago we uncovered Oakland Police’s new cell site simulator agreement with the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, which gives them access to the powerful HailStorm, an updated version of the Harris Corporation’s infamous StingRay. In those documents we saw that Fremont Police Department was also going to take up Alameda County on their offer to use the device, so we filed a request - they got back to us last week with their own records, and it appears they have completed the necessary steps to begin using the device.

Iowa is not a state that has been reported as having StingRay surveillance devices, which is why were surprised when the Department of Public Safety responded to our Cell Site Simulator census with a $147.90 invoice for records processing fees. After payment and some waiting, we finally received Iowa’s response, and instead of a fresh batch of records to pore over, what we got was another example of expansive exemptions used to withhold information about these devices.

In May of 2014 the Florida ACLU filed a FOIA request to Sarasota PD for their documents on Stingrays. However, just days before the ACLU was due to inspect the documents, the United States Marshals Service swooped into Sarasota and rushed off with almost all of SPD’s Stingray records. We say almost, because this strange collection of records that SPD recently gave us is evidently is everything the Marshals missed.