next on "kqed newsroom," the cell phone tracking device more bay area police departments are buying. plus, what your cell phone battery might reveal about you. also, the trial that's the talk of silicon valley. ♪ good evening and welcome to "newsroom." i'm thuy vu. tonight we're going to talk about how law enforcement and hackers can track your cell phone. later in the show you'll hear from a stanford researcher about how much one sensor in your phone can reveal about you. but first, we're going to talk about devices known as stingrays, amberjacks, and triggerfish. these are devices police use to track the location of cell phones. they mimic cell phone towers and trick your phone into sending a signal with its location and other information.

police say these devices can help them locate suspects and missing persons. but privacy advocates point out the devices can also collect information on every mobile phone in the area. law enforcement officials don't like to talk about this surveillance technology. documents show that some bay area police departments including oakland, san francisco, and san jose already own these devices. this week the santa clara board of supervisors approved the sheriff's request to buy the technology. but as you're about to see, the sheriff couldn't provide the board with a lot of details. >> we're going to spend $500,000 to buy a particular model of a product, yes? >> again, we refer to it as a mobile -- but what the device -- >> i'm asking you on the record in an open and public setting for a reason. what's the model? >> i think it's -- i think the current one is hailstorm, i think is the name that they call it. >> are you asking us for a model

number or -- >> i just think it's noteworthy that i'm asking for something that's been in the works for a year and a half. we don't know what the model is. we don't know what the product is. if i was buying a chevy nova, i'd know it was a chevy nova. >> the people who are purchasing this will know what the exact model number is and what it's called. >> i didn't ask what the exact model number is. i just pointed out we're having a conversation about a $500,000 purchase with a $40,000 a year ongoing cost and the two people who are in front of us asking for us to authorize that can't tell us what model we're buying, what it's called, what the name is. i don't know if it's a stingray, a triggerfish, a hailstorm, some other thing. doesn't sound to me -- have we seen a demonstration of this item? >> it is a mobile cellular triangular -- >> i'm sorry. have we seen a demonstration of this item? >> other agencies have this. we have not had a demonstration of this particular -- >> so we don't know what it's called and we haven't seen a demonstration of the thing that you want us to spend half a

million dollars of taxpayers' money for with a $42,000 ongoing annual expense. >> i think we've described the equipment and its capabilities. >> it would be easier for us to ascertain the accuracy of that information if we could see the product specs. can we see the product specs? >> i'm not sure i can answer that question. we don't currently have them. i don't know if they're releasable. >> okay. it's also widely understood that products of this type pick up not only individual cell phone numbers and locations but by virtue of the fact that they're mimicking a cell phone tower end up pulling information for other phones as well. is that correct? >> we cannot track a phone unless we have the code, and the code comes from the cell phone company via a search warrant. >> was there a competitive procurement process on this? >> no. it was single source. >> that was supervisor joe

simitian grilling sheriff laurie smith. simitian voted against the plan. his fellow supervisors approved the purchase with a caveat. the sheriff's department must develop a policy outlining how it will be used. we asked a department spokesman, sergeant kirk stenderup, for more details about the plan. >> sergeant stenderup, thank you for joining us. >> thank you. >> why did your department need the stingray device? >> so it all started back in 2012 when we had a kidnapping case down in south county. a young guy, teenage girl goes missing on her way to school. deputies get a report of that, the first question they ask to the mother, does your daughter have a cell phone in and of course yes. so we immediately contacted the cell phone company through our existing communication lines and tried to locate that cell phone. we actually spent the next two days trying to find it. little did we know that we located her about a quarter mile from her residence in the field. but it really brought to the forefront this topic of being able to locate cell phones in

these emergency situations or when we need to find an armed and dangerous criminal. we brought that to the forefront. and here we are three years later trying to acquire this device so that we can have a better tool and a better resource to keep the community safer. >> have you tested this device? >> no. we actually haven't even demoed it. >> so why are you buying something you haven't tested? >> what we're looking at is we know other law enforcement agencies throughout california and the united states use this as well as federal law inforcement agencies. so what we're doing right now is we're in the process of trying to secure this device. obviously there is some security features by this company that manufactures it that goes through it that don't want a lot of information disclosed about it. we're trying to do our best to make sure we give the public information as we have to dispel those myths but also realize that it's a tool and a resource and it doesn't do a lot of things the community i think believes by googling it. this is not an eavesdropping device. this is not a device that can read text messages.

it can't download the data off cell phones. it can't even listen to a cell phone. >> privacy experts will take issue with that. they say these devices are very capable about disclosing information about texts, your e-mails and conversations. can you guarantee you will not be accessing that information? >> i can absolutely guarantee it because again what we're talking about is capable. and we're not buying that device. we're not buying the device to do that. that's not our intention. that's not what we want to do. our intention is to buy a mobile phone triangulation device. our device has no capabilities from the manufacturer to do that. we don't even have the ability to modify that. it's strictly for being able to triangulate a communication on a mobile phone device. >> is it true it can capture cell phone data from bystanders who happen to be in the area? >> that's not true. that's absolutely not true. and that's the kind of myth we're trying to dispel. what happens is you have to have a certain code or serial number that is required to have a search warrant to get from the cell phone company. we then enter it into this device and it will triangulate the location of the phone.

there's no ability for the phone to capture everybody's information. there's no ability for that. we don't want that. we don't want to be able to eavesdrop. we want to be able to locate that cellular device in these very limited circumstances to keep the community safer. >> so when will you use these devices? only when you have a warrant? and what kinds of training will you provide officers? >> so again, this is not training we provide the whole department. these are training for a specific amount of people that go through the manufacturer-based training. we will use it in circumstances for serious or violent felonies against people. your murderers your rapists your child molesters. search and rescue implications. so people who are at risk and missing, we have -- for example, in 2014 we had over 111 at-risk missing persons calls. and finally for human trafficking. it's become a big top nick santa clara county and our human trafficking task force is recovering a ton of victims. in fact in the last six months we've recovered over ten, many of them being juveniles. it's another tool in the toolbox

we can use to help people being exploited for sex and labor trafficking to stop and bring those responsible to justice. >> will you obtain a warrant in every single instance before you use the stingray? >> correct. we will obtain a warrant, either prior to and that requires a judge to sign off on theh>d probable cause,pror in the circumstance where it isn't a life or death emergency we can obtain by signing a form under penalty of perjury to the cell phone company to get that code, we're required that within three days a search warrant must be issued based on that. so the safeguards are in place to prevent the misuse of it. >> well, according to the aclu it's identified 48 agencies nationwide that are already using the stingray. have you looked at their experiences? is there any evidence that this is indeed an effective law enforcement tool, or are we just making presumptions here? >> no, we actually have talked to law enforcement agencies. and it is a great tool. and to build on that. a lot of law enforcement agencies we've reached out to,

none of them have reported any privacy issues or misuse issues. so i think a lot of times when people bring that up about those issues when we reach out to these agencies we're finding that's whatnot we're hearing back. >> well, sergeant stenderup, thank you for your time. >> thank you. >> and joining me now to discuss this new surveillance technology is jennifer lynch. she's a staff attorney with the electronic frontier foundation a civil liberties advocacy organization. jennifer, thanks for joining us. >> thank you for having me on the show. >> what concerns do you have about this technology? >> well i have several concerns. one, my first biggest concern is that we just don't know very much about where the technology is being used. and that's in large part because the government is essentially hiding the use of their technology and the corporations that are manufacturing the technology are requiring law enforcement agencies to sign non-disclosure agreements to prevent information coming out to the public about how these devices are being used. but from what we do know, these devices create a huge privacy

invasion because they can collect information on hundreds or thousands of phones in a given area. >> well, you just saw the interview with sergeant stenderup with the santa clara sheriff's department. based on what he said does that ease your concerns? >> well, it's nice to hear that santa clara is planning to get a warrant before they use these devices. however, we have yet to see any kind of policy from the sheriff's department that guarantees that they're going to use these devices in a way that protects privacy. >> you don't buy his argument that he basically says that it will not be used to capture the cell phone data off any bystanders for example? >> well, that's what i'm particularly concerned about. because from the manufacturing materials we've seen and from how other agencies are using these devices they are definitely using the devices to capture information on all cell phones within a given area. a lot of times law enforcement doesn't know the cell phone that they're looking for and so they use a stingray device to find

that cell phone. so perhaps there's a way to clamp down on how the stingray is being used and prevent it from collecting all that data but we haven't seen that. >> police departments say that this device could help them locate victims of kidnappings. it could help them locate dangerous criminals. are these devices effective crime-fighting tools? >> we have no idea. again, there's so little transparency about how these devices are being used. it's very easy for a law enforcement agency to say well, we've got all this crime out there, so we need these surveillance tools. but without a link to how they're going to use the tools to find somebody who's been kidnapped or find somebody who's a victim of human trafficking we just don't know. and we certainly didn't see that in the interview with the sergeant. >> in general, how long have agencies been using this on average? is there enough data there for you to be able to tell if they've been used effectively? >> i think if we had access to

the actual data we might be able to tell that. but at this point we don't. we barely even know which agencies have them. i mean, right here in the bay area it took a number of public records requests to find out that san jose and fremont and san francisco and alameda county used these devices. but much of the information that came out in response to a public records request was blacked out because companies like the harris corporation require that in their non-disclosure agreements. >> and why do you think police agencies go along with that? there seems to be very little transparency in these cases. and very little competitive bidding. >> you know i think it's because the police agencies see it as free money. the money's coming from the department of homeland security. so it's not coming out of the police department budget. and it's earmarked to purchase stingray devices orst other kinds of surveillance technology. >> some people listening to this discussion may think, well, you know what i'm a law-abiding

citizen, i'm doing nothing wrong i don't have a problem with this. what do you say to them? >> that's not how our constitution was drafted. our constitution was drafted to protect everybody. and it places important limits on law enforcement's ability to gather data on us. so it doesn't matter if you're a law-abiding citizen today. the government could consider you to be a not law-abiding citizen tomorrow. and if the government is collecting all this information on us and storing it they can use that information at a later date to link you to a crime. >> as technology becomes increasingly sophisticated, is there a way for us to strike that balance between public safety and privacy? >> well, i think the most important thing is that the public needs to know what law enforcement is doging. what are these surveillance technologies law enforcement is using? and the public needs an opportunity to provide feedback. that certainly didn't happen in santa clara. >> do you have any evidence that law enforcement agencies are

misusing or abusing these devices? >> we don't. we don't have that information because we haven't seen a lot of information come out about how the devices are being used. but we do know that these devices are used to capture multiple phones in an area and there's no limitation placed on whether those phones are out in public or not. so for example, if i have my phone in my house, the device is going to capture that location information even though the phone is in my house. >> so in light of that just real quickly, do you see a need for more safeguards to protect our civil liberties? what should that look like? >> i definitely see a need for more safeguards. the public needs to provide input on how the technology's being used. and law enforcement needs to commit to using a warrant and to prevent misuse of this technology. >> all right. well, certainly very interesting. jennifer lynch with the electronic frontier foundation. thank you for joining us. >> thank you for having me on the show. >> and now on a related topic, stanford university researchers have discovered another way your

phone could reveal your location. scott shafer is with computer scientist aaron schulman. >> aaron schulman welcome. >> thank you. >> in layman's terms tell us what you and your team discovered. >> so our smartphones today are filled with a lot of sensors. for instance a compass and gyroscope, et cetera. and what's interesting is most of those sensors require some sort of permission from the application that's using them. so if you download an application it will say hey i need the compass and that might reveal your location. but there's one sensor in particular that doesn't actually need that and it's sort of a little-talked about sensor which is the power sensor. which tracks the power consumption of your phone over time. >> so these apps potentially can access that? >> that's right. yeah. any app actually in the android store can access that. and that power sensor is a bit troubling, or can be because it might reveal something about your location. so for instance, when you're driving down a road, you're moving closer and farther away from cell towers. and the closer you are to a cell

tower, the less power your phone consumes to talk to it. and the farther way the more. >> do you think this is a curious coincidence you that found this, or is it something that was built in deliberately for some reason? >> well, they definitely built it in in order to help developers of applications. so they can improve the energy consumption of their applications and save our phones some battery life. >> but it just so happens that you discovered that these are not protected, basically. >> yeah exactly. i think as it was viewed as a developer tool maybe it wasn't viewed as something that needed to be protected. >> so was this oh, my god, someone's going to spy on me or was it oh, this is interesting let me find out more about this? >> it was interesting. we found it was kind of a direct result of something else we were working on and we said oh, actually that makes sense. you could use that to track the user's location. so it was even a bit surprising to us actually. >> but why is it important? >> it's important because again, it's not protected. the user doesn't know, doesn't

have any information that they could have their location tracked by these power measurements. >> and so who would have access to it? who would want to be tracking us on android phones? >> sort of the most likely attacker would actually be someone who has a large commercial application and they want to use that information of your location to figure out sort of where you are to target advertisements. >> so they want to make money off you. >> exactly. we think that's generally going to be the most likely attacker for something -- >> but what about the government? that's been a big concern about the nsa and all that. could they -- seems like they also could use it. >> without a doubt. i certainly can't speculate what they do or do not know in terms of -- >> they know about what you're doing, right? >> yeah. >> they will tonight. >> yeah, that's correct. >> so is that a concern? should it be? >> i think generally we should be concerned about what information is made available. and the user should be made aware of what could be made available. so that's actually why we do this research is to aunderstand

hopefully ahead of the attackers what could be made available and inform the users. >> what would be a fix? how could you make sure this doesn't happen if you didn't want it to? >> it's actually somewhat straightforward. you could have the android operating system protect this power sensor and have it have a permission like all the other devices we have on the phone. >> so the makers of these phones would have to do it. >> no actually android, the operating system folks would have to do it. >> have you heard from them? is there anything they're thinking about changing? >> we've been in contact with them, and we're -- it's our understanding that at some point hopefully this will be addressed. >> and it will be addressed to make it sort of default you that won't have to worry about it? >> well, essentially, it should say when the application is using this power sensor, it should say to the user that potentially your location could be revealed. >> and so right now there's a user agreement that everyone says yes to because they're too long to read, they don't even include this information? >> no. right now again when you install an app it shows what things the app might be accessing on your phone, what sensors it might access and it

doesn't say anything about your location through this power -- >> so now that you have figured out that power consumption is one way to track somebody, are you looking for others? >> so right now we're not actually as focused on what -- sort of what tracking information you can get, but we're actually looking further into this power sensor to see what other information. >> so more to come. >> exactly. >> in the meantime you can use your land line i guess to really worry about it. aaron schulman from stanford's department of computer science. thanks so much for coming in. >> i appreciate it. thank you. the tech world is keeping a close eye on a trial now under way in san francisco. it's a case that involved one of the most prominent venture capital firms in silicon valley. ellen pao is suing kleiner perkins for gender discrimination. she claims the firm refused to promote her when she worked there because she is a woman. kleiner perkins contends powell

did not have the right skills to move up the ladder. the case is happening at a time when the tech industry is facing more scrutiny for its lack of diversity. liz gaines, a reporter for recode, has been in the courtroom all week and joins us now. hi, liz. >> hi. >>. >> this seems like a tantalizing novelful sex point, and power. what are the revelation that's came out in court this week? >> yeah, we've just been waiting for the drugs and rock and roll to come out. no, the biggest revelation was for people who have been following the case was a new witness, and that was trey vasolo, a former kleiner perkins partner who testified she was also harassed by a former partner as well named ajit nasre who is the same person that ellen pao says pressured her into having an affair. and another thing that's really been at issue and i think will continue to be an issue in this month-long trial is just people who see the same situation really differently and that comes out in these performance res reviews. we've gone into excruciating

detail. i wouldn't say this is salacious at all. into people's different opinions about whether someone being territorial and sharp-elbowed is a good or bad thing for being a good venture capitalist. >> another thing about the performance reviews is the man that ellen pao accused of pa rasing her contributed to one of those performance reviews eefr after an allegation surfaced but anonymous anonymously. >> yeah. it's unclear who was aware of what at the time. but this guy had a pattern of problems in his relationships with women. kleiner perkins is testifying the relationship he had with ellen pao was consensual so they write that off as not a contributing factor to their ongoing relationship. they also point to evidence that ellen pao was supportive of him at the time. but i think mostly what's going on here is we're talking about a world where women are dramatically underrepresented. so these kind of unequal relationships that are going on stem from the fact that i think women account for something like

4% of people who make investment decisions at venture capital firms. >> at kleiner perkins, though they'll argue that its record on hiring females is rather good, that it's got 20% female partners. >> yeah. i don't want to fudge with -- i don't want to argue their numbers being bad or good. i think that they do have a track record of having women in senior roles. and especially recently. but 20% is not a great number. and when you're talking about the people who control the money that funds these companies that make products that everyone in the world uses you hope that comes from a more representative place. >> who are the jurors in this case? >> i would venture to say that the jurors are not as high income as the people who are testifying. it has been kind of crazy to hear about the high-flying world of venture capital in detail-o to get to get the numbers associated with it. ellen pao, for instance, in 2012 when she was let go from the

firm, when she was told to pack up her desk, she was also told she would be paid $33,000 a month to do nothing. i don't think that's necessarily very relatable for a lot of the jurors. a surprising amount of the incidents take place on private jets. not exactly something a lot of us spend a lot of time with. >> and a lot is at stake here. you mentioned how these vc firms fund companies that make products that so many of us use. do they have the power to make the industry more receptive to women? >> yes. i think that there are -- women are underrepresented at all levels of the industry. but specifically with respect to money i think that firms would make better decisions if they had better representation of women. and right now the people who are contributing to those decisions are just not women. and ellen pao, it will be yet to be seen whether or not it can be proven in court that she deserved a promotion or not, that this harassment and discrimination contributed to her leaving the firm unjustly. but i think that this trial is

being so closely watched not necessarily because of the specifics, which like i said are really -- it can be seen from both sides all the time. but because it's representative of that dramatic inequity between women and men in this industry. >> most of these types of cases never make it to trial. they get settled out of court. why do you think this one did make it to trial? >> i think because it's not clear who's right and who's wrong. if ellen pao had no case she would not have filed the lawsuit. if kleiner perkins felt like it was going to be dramatically embarrassed it would have settled. but they both think that they're right. and so they're able to kind of continue down this process. it's very expensive and very public process in which neither one of them look great. intimate details of ellen's sex life are being brought to light. she has to sit there and listen to her former co-workers describe her as a terrible employee. and meanwhile, kleiner perkins has now become kind of like the icon of the old boys network which is not exactly the image it wants to present. so they're both suffering. they can't agree on anything.

so therefore, they're in court. >> and in fact there, were some other details that came out about how the man who's accused in this case actually showed up at one of his co-co-workers at her hotel room in his bathrobe. there are salacious details as you say. that aside do you think this case is a referendum on gender discrimination in the valley or will it simply over the long haul be just another case? >> it comes at a crucial moment of discussion and it pushes that discussion forward. i don't think that if ellen pao wins or loses this case it will be the be-all and end-all of this discussion. but i do think it's important to bring to light the dynamics that go on in these immensely powerful organizations. >> and ellen pao is now the interim ceo of reddit. so she has landed in a good place. >> that's right. and that's actually an issue in the case because kleiner perkins is arguing she shouldn't get damages because she's gone on to such a lucrative role. >> and if you had to grade each side after this first week --

>> interesting. >> is there a side that's doing better? >> no i don't think so. i think it's remarkable how little they can agree on. >> okay. what happens next? >> next week we're expecting to hear from john dorr. he's the most powerful and best known partner at kleiner perkins. he's also according to testimony from really everyone in the case been not at fault for a lot of the gender discrimination that's been alleged. he was continually an advocate of ellen pao within the organization. but then again, when she filed her lawsuit, he was the one who came out and said that it was completely false. so this is a guy who i imagine is very troubled by what went on and it will be interesting to see how he describes what happened. >> and real quickly, down the line, barry meeker, also a managing director at kleiner perkins is expected to take the stand. >> yeah. the very famous internet analyst who became a partner. so we're definitely looking forward to hearing from her. >> her testimony should be fascinating. thank you. liz gaines with recode. g >> sure. thank you. >> that is all for tonight.

for all of kqed's news coverage please go to kqed.org. i'm thuy vu. have a good night. ♪ ♪

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