Senator Wyden to FCC: How much do police stingrays drain a cellphone battery?

In a new letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR) submitted a slew of new questions concerning how the controversial stingray devices interact with the 911 emergency system. His inquiries come on the heels of efforts in May to scrutinize what the Department of Justice knows about the secretive use of these devices. In addition, Sen Wyden got a new amendment into an appropriations bill that was approved by the Senate on June 25. The amendment requires the Department of Defense to notify the Armed Services Committee about all stingrays detected near military bases during the previous three years and to describe what actions the Department has taken to protect service members and their families against hostile stingrays.

Recently, as part of Sen Wyden's ongoing efforts to shed more light on the shadowy technology, the Department of Homeland Security told him that there were foreign-controlled fake cell-tower surveillance devices in Washington (DC). DHS said that, not only did it not know how to find them, the agency could not determine whether stingrays interfere with 911 calls. Now, Sen Wyden wants to know what the FCC knows about this type of disruption. Amongst his slew of new questions—which he has said the agency must answer by July 13—he wants to know about what level of testing it has done, and if it hasn’t, why not.