Congressman introduces bill to end warrantless Stingray surveillance

Legislation from Jason Chaffetz would make it illegal for Stingray technology to be deployed without a warrant: 'If you're just on a surfing expedition, back off'

A bill has been introduced in Congress that aims to control the use of the sophisticated surveillance equipment known as Stingray, following a Guardian investigation which revealed the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as the 13th federal agency known to possess the devices.

Stingrays are one of a class of suitcase-size devices known as "cell-site simulators", which work by pretending to be a cellphone tower in order to strip data and metadata from any phones which connect to them.