StingRay devices aren’t the only contentious tool in law enforcement’s bag of surveillance-based tricks, with mobile-identifier Hailstorm growing in use and popularity, The Economist reports. “I have never seen a tool that is on one hand treated in such a cloak-and-dagger fashion, but on the other used as a bread and butter tool,” said West Point’s Army Cyber Institute’s Stephanie Pell. “Law-enforcement agencies rarely seek explicit court approval to employ cell-site simulators, and rarely admit to their use after the fact,” the report states, adding that the police reticence has made the regulation of such devices immensely tricky. Regardless, after a Baltimore man was found to have been arrested via Hailstorm assistance, a judge maintained that the lack of a warrant in this case meant his Fourth Amendment rights had been violated, a ruling that privacy advocates say is precedent setting.
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