Government spying might be making your cell phone service crappy

(Image credit: iStock)

published 3 March 2015

In recent years, federal agencies and local police alike have availed themselves of technology known as "stingrays," cell phone surveillance devices that essentially fool your phone into thinking it's a cell tower. As the ACLU notes, stingrays "also gather information about the phones of countless bystanders who happen to be nearby," which means police could be keeping tabs on your location and other info, sans warrant.

Now, a newly released document indicates that the local reach of the devices may be interfering with cell service, too. Because of how the stingray functions, "its use has the potential to intermittently disrupt cellular service to a small fraction of Sprint’s wireless customers within its immediate vicinity," wrote FBI Special Agent Michael A. Scimeca.

"If an emergency or important/urgent call (to a doctor, a loved one, etc.) is blocked or dropped by this technology," says the ACLU's Nate Wessler, "that’s a serious problem."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.