But the secret's out. People — including (gasp) criminals know they exist.
So why are local law enforcement agencies still working with the US Marshals to try to hide when they have been used (scrubbing references to them from reports, claiming accused criminals were located by receiving information from "confidential sources," etc.)?
The ACLU has a pretty good guess: 'Concealing the use of stingrays deprives defendants of their right to challenge unconstitutional surveillance and keeps the public in the dark about invasive monitoring by local police.'
In other words, it doesn't look good, and it may not have been legally done, so let's just keep it our little secret. Just the way you want your police to behave.
Internal Police Emails Show Efforts to Hide Use of Cell Phone Tracking
As we suspected, local law enforcement officials are borrowing cell phone tracking devices known as “stingrays” from the U.S. Marshals Service—and police are deliberately concealing the use of stingrays in court documents submitted to judges in criminal investigations.
The ACLU of …