Federal investigators obtained court authorizations to use cell-site simulators, devices that impersonate cell towers to locate phones, to find Jerome Richardson, a 21-year-old Temple University graduate who helped produce Don Lemon’s coverage of a January 18 anti-ICE protest at Cities Church in St. Paul. Richardson is one of 39 people charged with conspiring to violate worshippers’ civil rights and interfering with religious worship related to that protest. Judges in Minnesota and Pennsylvania signed cell-site simulator warrants on January 30 and January 31, respectively, saying the purpose was locating and arresting Richardson. Agents also applied for cell-site simulator warrants targeting journalist Georgia Fort and Minnesota state Senate candidate Jamael Lundy, and sought pen register orders for Fort and a number WIRED traced to Don Lemon, though the records do not show whether those applications were approved or the simulators were ever deployed. Richardson’s lawyers have moved to exclude any tracking evidence obtained with the devices, and Fort’s lawyers told the court in July that prosecutors “did not know” whether the surveillance applications had been authorized or produced evidence. Civil liberties experts have warned that cell-site simulators can collect identifying information from nearby phones indiscriminately, and Cooper Quintin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation called using the devices against members of the press an “appalling attack on the First Amendment.”
