Vallejo Stingray Use Policy Up for Public Comment at October 27 City Council Meeting

Update: 11-17-2020 The Vallejo City Council incorporated changes requested by Oakland Privacy, ACLU and EFF to strengthen the use policy, including restrictions on First Amendment use, datasharing with federal immigration, publishing a quarterly log, and returning to Council for any software or hardware additions to the unit. The new stronger policy was unanimously adopted by the City Council. The first quarterly log is expected to be published in early December.

Update 10-23-20 After getting hundreds of emails, the Vallejo City Council agreed to stick to the originally announced date of 10-27 for the stingray policy hearing.

Update 10-9-2020: Afer informing us the stingray policy was agendized for public comment at the 10-27 meeting, the City of Vallejo reversed themselves and suddenly announced the discussion would be added to the October 13 agenda instead. We’re pretty sure the sudden change was intended to minimize public comment, so it’s up to us to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Take a second and use this easy online action to tell the Vallejo City Council to stick to the original date.

Take Action

Vallejo residents Solange Echeverria and Daniel Rubins, along with advocacy group Oakland Privacy, filed a lawsuit against the City of Vallejo after the purchase of a cell site simulator {stingray} was not accompanied by a privacy policy for public input from city residents and a vote of approval by the City Council. The plaintiffs alleged the process was not compliant with Section 53166 of state law, which became effective on January 1, 2016 as Senate Bill 741 (Hill), after being signed into law by then-Governor Jerry Brown.

On August 28, Solano Superior Court judge Bradley Nelson granted our request for an alternative writ of mandate and ordered the City to show cause why he should not prohibit it from using this invasive technology without a proper privacy policy that was approved by the City Council. On October 1, after issuing a tentative ruling suggesting that he agrees with the Plaintiffs and then hearing argument, Judge Nelson took the matter under submission.

The City of Vallejo has since indicated that the privacy and use policy would be placed back on the City Council agenda for the October 27^th meeting. This meeting will provide an opportunity for Vallejo residents to read, review and comment upon the policy prior to adoption by the City.

A cell site simulator pretends to be a cell phone tower, to which cell phones connect in order to initiate a phone call. Once a cell phone connects to the cell site simulator, the cell phone’s IMSI number can be obtained and used to track the location of the cell phone. Cell site simulators also pick up metadata from other devices in proximity to the targeted one.

The Vallejo City Council originally listed the purchase of the controversial equipment on the consent calendar of the March 24, 2020 council meeting, just days after California went into lock down from the COVID 19 pandemic. The item contained nothing but a staff report which incorrectly described the equipment’s capabilities, and a purchase order. At the lightly attended remote meeting, Oakland Privacy research director Mike Katz-Lacabe inquired regarding the privacy policy and was told it existed, but was not available for review by the City Council nor by the public. Oakland Privacy had informed the Vallejo City Council before the March 24 meeting that they were not compliant with state law. Nonetheless, the Vallejo City Council voted unanimously to acquire the device without reviewing the privacy and use policy.

Following the meeting, Oakland Privacy and the Electronic Frontier Foundation both sent letters to the City stating Vallejo had violated state law. Oakland Privacy’s March 27^th letter which can be found here, requested the privacy and usage policy be placed on the agenda at the next regularly scheduled council meeting and the purchase suspended. On March 30, the Electronic Frontier Foundation sent a similar letter demanding the purchase be halted. Vallejo ignored both, and simply posted a policy to their website a week later. City residents never had any opportunity to see the policy or to comment on it. Vallejo residents and Oakland Privacy filed suit in June of 2020.

Decisions to acquire and deploy invasive technology should happen in broad daylight. Cell site simulators (or stingrays) introduce profound challenges to privacy, public safety and human rights and have been the object of congressional investigations, complaints to the Federal Communications Commission and Department of Justice rulemakings. Non-disclosure statements manufacturers ask buyers to sign greatly limit public information about how the devices work and how they are used.

Oakland Privacy vs City of Vallejo has created a chance for Vallejo residents, who have long been calling for citizen oversight of their police department, to comment on the stingray privacy policy.