Post

US law enforcement agents obtained authorization to use a controversial cell phone surveillance device to find and arrest a college student who helped produce journalist Don Lemon’s coverage of an anti-ICE protest, court filings show.

The former student was charged with conspiring to violate worshippers’ civil rights and interfering with religious worship at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, in January. 39 other people, including journalists Georgia Fort and Lemon, were also charged.

Twelve days after the protest, judges in two states began signing warrants authorizing agents to use so-called cell-site simulators to target Richardson’s phone. The purpose, his lawyers wrote in a motion seeking to exclude the tracking evidence, was “locating and arresting him.”

Agents also applied for cell-site simulator warrants targeting the phones of Fort and Jamael Lundy, then a Minnesota State Senate candidate. They separately sought pen register orders, which can log the numbers a phone contacts, for Fort and a number WIRED traced to Lemon.

It's unclear whether a judge approved any of those applications. The records reviewed by WIRED do not establish whether investigators actually deployed a cell-site simulator to locate Richardson or whether judges approved the applications targeting Fort and Lundy.

Cell-site simulators impersonate cell phone towers to locate a target’s phone. In doing so, they can also collect identifying information from any nearby cellular device, including those belonging to people who aren’t suspected of a crime.

The use of cell-site simulators has long been shrouded in secrecy. Privacy advocates have long warned that the devices could be turned against protesters and journalists.