Back in December, Virginia Attorney
General Ken Cuccinelli announced a boatload of grants to local
law-enforcement agencies, made possible by a multimillion-dollar
Medicaid fraud settlement with Abbott Labs. Chesterfield received
more than $550,000 “to fund training for four officers for the
Hailstorm Training in Florida, to purchase the StingRay I to
Hailstorm Upgrade which will allow officers to transmit and receive
communication signals from targeted cell devices, the Harpoon PA
kit…an AmberJack, which is an antenna upgrade,” and more.
Coming from now former Attorney General Cuccinelli, this was a
bit surprising. Only a few months before, he had issued an opinion
warning local police departments about license-plate readers. It
was fine to use them to confront an immediate threat. But routinely
using the readers—which can take up to 1,800 pictures a minute—to
vacuum up large amounts of data regarding the whereabouts of
ordinary citizens unconnected to an investigation is
unconstitutional, he said. And that’s exactly what the Stingray and
Hailstorm systems do, points out A. Barton Hinkle, only with
cellphones.
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