Feds sought cell-site simulator warrants targeting Don Lemon's producer and journalist Georgia Fort

Left · 2Court filings reviewed by Wired show that US law enforcement agents obtained authorization to use cell-site simulators, devices that intercept cell phone signals, to find and arrest Jerome Richardson, a 21-year-old college student who helped produce journalist Don Lemon's coverage of an anti-ICE protest. 1 2 Left · 1Judges in two states signed the warrants targeting Richardson's phone, one in Minnesota on January 30 and another in Pennsylvania the next day, twelve days after the protest. 1 Left · 1Agents also applied for cell-site simulator warrants targeting the phones of journalist Georgia Fort and Jamael Lundy, then a Minnesota State Senate candidate, and separately sought pen register orders for Fort and a number Wired traced to Lemon; it is unclear whether a judge approved any of those applications. 1

Left · 2The records do not establish whether a simulator was actually deployed to locate Richardson; in a July letter, Fort's lawyers said prosecutors "did not know" whether the applications had been authorized or had yielded evidence. 1 2 Left · 2Richardson, who has since graduated from Temple University, is among 39 people charged with conspiring to violate worshippers' civil rights and interfering with religious worship at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, after a January 18 protest; Fort and Lemon, a former CNN host, are also charged and say they were there to cover the demonstration. 1 2 Left · 2Protesters said they targeted the church because one of its pastors, David Easterwood, also led ICE's St. Paul field office; prosecutors allege Richardson joined chants and obstructed congregants, while Richardson says he supported Lemon's work. 1 2

Left · 2The affidavits supporting the Richardson applications claimed video showed Fort, Lemon, Richardson and others "chanting with agitators"; prosecutors have since conceded that Lemon and Fort did not chant, and Fort's lawyers say the government acknowledged the false claim appeared in at least 15 warrant affidavits. 1 2 Left · 2Wired questions why such an intrusive tool was sought: the second warrant was signed two days before Richardson voluntarily surrendered at a Philadelphia federal courthouse, on the same day he posted a video saying he expected to enter custody "in the coming days", and he was released on bond that afternoon. 1 2 Left · 2Cell-site simulators impersonate cell towers and can collect identifying information from any nearby device, including those of people not suspected of a crime, which privacy advocates call dragnet surveillance. 1 2

Left · 1Cooper Quintin, senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, called using such a capability against the press "an appalling attack on the First Amendment"; a former federal prosecutor said using a simulator to locate someone is not necessarily unusual but called the tactics aggressive. 1 Left · 1The Justice Department told Wired it "speaks through its court filings"; DHS declined to discuss ongoing investigations or methods and referred questions to the US Attorney's Office for Minnesota, which did not respond. Lawyers for Lemon, Lundy and Fort did not respond, and Richardson's lawyers declined to comment on the record. 1 Left · 1Wired places the warrants within a wider pattern of investigative tactics, including DHS demands for journalists' phone and YouTube records under a customs authority needing no prior judicial approval, and defense attorneys' challenge to 92 customs summonses. 1