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Law enforcement relies heavily on technology to solve crimes.
Agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, FIrearms and Explosives revealed this week that they used a controversial smartphone-snooping device to hunt for a low-level accused drug dealer, Robert Snell of The Detroit News reports. The case shows the creeping use of a terror-fighting tool to solve everyday crimes.
Snell writes:
The device was used by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to find and arrest Inkster resident Daiven Hollinshed late last month, according to federal search warrant records obtained by The Detroit News. The secret device, known as a Hailstorm or Stingray, masquerades as a cell tower and tricks nearby phones into providing location data and helped track Hollinshed to an Inkster home Sept. 20.
“(Hollinshed) answered the door and he asked how they had found him,” Assistant U.S. Attorney April Russo said during a Sept. 22 hearing in federal court in Detroit.
There is no indication agents told Hollinshed about the Stingray. Russo avoided mentioning the technology during a recent court hearing while chronicling a month-long manhunt.
Snell reports that the search warrant filing appears to be the first time federal investigators and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit have publicly acknowledged using the device since the Justice Department instituted sweeping new guidelines.
