From Joe Simitian, a Santa Clara, California, county supervisor:
“So, just to be clear, we are being asked to spend $500,000 of taxpayers’ money and $42,000 a year thereafter for a product for the name brand which we are not sure of, a product we have not seen, a demonstration we don’t have, and we have a nondisclosure requirement as a precondition. You want us to vote and spend money,” he continued, but “you can’t tell us more about it.”
The expenditures in question are for a device, called the Stingray, that would allow the Santa Clara Sheriff’s department to track cellphones. Beyond that, a nondisclosure agreement signed with the company that makes the Stingray, the Harris Corporation, requires users not to disclose anything about the device, not even to the politicians who must approve paying for it. For more details about this super-secret gizmo, and its disturbing civil liberties implications, the story is linked above and here: Super-Secret Gizmo.
