CHICAGO · CELL-SITE SIMULATOR · RECORDKEEPING

Illinois required warrants. CPD's Stingray unit nevertheless kept no deployment log—and a city-retained attorney advised against creating one.

Legal safeguard → no usable audit trail → compliance difficult to verify

WHERE

Chicago · Cook County · IL

View this place in the Illinois surveillance directory →

Illinois' Citizen Privacy Protection Act restricts law-enforcement use of cell-site simulators and generally requires a warrant. But the ACLU of Illinois reported that Chicago Police Department Tech Lab personnel testified that they kept no log or electronic record of Stingray deployments and had no written regulations limiting use.

According to the ACLU's review of testimony and records, when a sergeant asked about keeping such records, an attorney retained by the City advised him not to. Hard-copy court orders were instead stored together with thousands of pen-register orders. When records were requested, the City argued that identifying the responsive material among more than 6,000 pages was unduly burdensome.

Why it matters: A warrant requirement answers who must approve surveillance. Recordkeeping answers whether anybody can later determine whether that requirement was actually followed.

Source: ACLU of Illinois — Stingrays and the Chicago Police Department

WHY THIS LIBRARY EXISTS

This page preserves the anecdote and its caveats separately from the shorter Why Privacy Matters explainer. The goal is to keep the argument readable without hiding the receipts.