The ACLU’s latest lawsuit on warrantless cellphone tracking has hit a dead end

This is really a 4th Amendment case but it concerns speech so I think it deserves a place here

Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union sued a local police department over the warrantless use of cellphone tracking devices, demanding that officials in Sarasota, Fla., hand over court documents concerning the practice.

The suit has now been thrown out. On Tuesday, State Circuit Court Judge Charles Williams found that he didn't have the jurisdiction to hear the case.

That's because even though the case concerns a local police department, it was working on behalf of the U.S. Marshals Service at the time that it deployed the stingray. Stingrays are used to collect information on nearby cellphones by setting up a fake cell tower; when wireless phones try to connect with the stingray, those contacts get logged by law enforcement.

The ACLU claims this is a violation of privacy. The group said it tried to get Sarasota police to produce the application it filed to a judge for permission to use the stingray, as well as the judge's order. But then, the ACLU said, the U.S. Marshals whisked the documents away to a federal facility, beyond the reach of Florida's public records law. Now the ACLU must either file a federal FOIA request to the U.S. Marshals or continue fighting the court case.

SOURCE