Federal prosecutors revealed charges Tuesday against a deputy U.S. Marshal for allegedly using the government’s real-time cellphone tracking tool on people with whom he had a “personal relationship” and also their spouses.
Adrian O. Pena then lied to investigators who confronted him about his abuse, prosecutors said, going so far as to pressure one of his tracking targets to sign a bogus document saying she had authorized the surveillance.
The government insists it has controls to prevent abuse of the tracking tool, Securus Technologies’ LBS platform, including requiring a user to upload documents justifying their request for tracking.
Mr. Pena, though, filed everything from blank pages to letterhead templates as his justification documents, then entered the number he wanted to track and got the location information, according to an indictment handed up last week by a grand jury in Texas.
“Although Pena was authorized to use the LBS platform only for official and authorized law enforcement purposes, Pena on numerous occasions used the LBS platform to obtain location data associated with the cellular telephones of his personal associates, including individuals with whom Pena was or had been in a personal relationship and their spouses,” the indictment charges.
The U.S. Marshals Service said it was cooperating with the investigation.
“We take seriously any allegation of misconduct by our personnel. The alleged actions of this employee do not reflect the core values of the U.S. Marshals Service, and Pena has been relieved of his operational duties and placed on administrative leave,” the service said in a statement.
Mr. Pena was using the tool for personal purposes from September 2016 to October 2017, the indictment says. It details nine different people Mr. Pena is alleged to have wrongly tracked.
In an interview with investigators in late 2017, Mr. Pena was asked if he’d ever used the tool to track family members, friends or a “high school girlfriend.”
“No,” he replied.
He said he had used the tool to test his own phone, to look up his wife’s phone with her permission, or locate a deputy’s lost phone. But he said “99%” of his use was for work, according to a partial transcript of the interview included in the indictment.
Mr. Pena gained access to the platform as part of a task force the Marshals Service ran with the Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office.
The indictment doesn’t reveal whether the relationships Mr. Pena had with his targets were sexual in nature, only describing them as “personal” — though it does make clear he also tracked their spouses.
Securus Technologies’ Location-Based Services platform relies on data purchased directly from telecommunications firms, delivering latitude and longitude coordinates for a phone’s whereabouts.
The platform was supposed to be used only for official and law enforcement purposes. Each user has a unique user name and password.
Securus Technologies said it permanently shut down the tool four years ago.
“The tool was engineered with safeguards and security protocols, but we also relied on the integrity of law enforcement to operate it ethically,” the company said. “All of this preceded our aggressive, multi-year transformation, and we wouldn’t and won’t provide the service ever again, period.”
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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