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US Marshals case draws attention to police cell phone tracking



A cell phone tracking tool allegedly used by a federal agent to track down an ex-girlfriend may have crashed, but analysts say they fear police now have even more invasive technology at their fingertips.

Adrian O. Pena, deputy US Marshal in Texas, was charged this month with violating the tool’s intent by prosecutors, who said Securus Technologies had used the LBS platform to track people with whom he had “personal relationships.” Used by police doing official business.

The behavior that won Mr. Pena’s review came in 2016 and 2017, and Securus says it shut down its LBS platform, which relies on cell phone ping, four years ago.

But Aaron Mackey of the Electronic Frontier Foundation says it’s likely that cops have found more precise tools that use GPS or WiFi locations.

“The demand for location data and the potential abuse of law enforcement’s ability to collect and access this data has not changed. What has changed is the technical way they get it,” said Mr. Mackey.

According to the indictment, Mr. Pena used the vehicle to track down at least nine people who were not authorized to monitor. When investigators looked into the matter in 2017, they repeatedly questioned whether he had used the tool on his ex-girlfriends.

He denied misusing the tool, but prosecutors say he lied.

Mr. Pena gained access to the platform as part of a task force that Marshals Service is running with the Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office, which has a contract with Securus Technologies for the Location-Based Services platform.

LBS relied on data purchased directly from telecommunications companies that provided latitude and longitude coordinates for a phone’s location.

The ability of the police to track someone over the phone is highly questionable, even if the system is not abused by bad actors. But the relative ease of duplicating the system raised new questions.

According to court documents, Securus LBS only required someone to log in, select their destination, upload a document justifying the search, then operate some buttons and replace the cell. And it turns out that uploading unnecessary documents works just fine to get around that hurdle.

The acts that prosecutors attribute to Mr Pena came in 2016 and 2017, but so far he has not been charged. It’s not clear why prosecutors waited so long, given that court documents showed investigators had met with Mr Pena in late 2017 and suspected him of lying at the time.

During that time, federal prosecutors won a conviction against a Missouri sheriff who used Securus’ LBS platform to monitor hundreds of people, including a state judge.

Securus said last week that it shut down the vehicle years ago.

“The tool was designed with safeguards and safety protocols, but we also relied on the integrity of law enforcement to operate it ethically,” the company said in a statement. “All of this preceded our aggressive, multi-year transformation and we will never and will never provide service again, period.”

The country’s leading cell service providers also say they’ve stopped selling essential data.

But there are other ways to track people on a smartphone.

Private vendors collected location data from apps people run, and Motherboard reported that several federal agencies, including the IRS and Customs and Border Protection, had access to some of this data.

The legal framework for unauthorized access to data is also part of the ongoing debate.

Analysts say that while technology and politics are worrying enough, the system Securus has built allows for abuses that come to light.

“No one was controlling this,” said Mr. Mackey of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “There has been no inspection by Securus or by law enforcement that has a contract with Securus.”

The Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office, which said contracted prosecutors covered Mr. Pena and his search, did not respond to a request for comment.

The US Police Service did not answer questions about steps taken to prevent such abuses in the future, instead focusing on Mr. Pena as a bad actor.

“This employee’s alleged actions do not reflect the core values ​​of the U.S. Police Service, and Pena has been removed from operational duties and placed on administrative leave,” the agency said. “An indictment is just an allegation and the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law beyond a reasonable doubt.”





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