Feds push for tracking cell phones

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10451518-38.html

Feds push for tracking cell phones

Two years ago, when the FBI was stymied by a band of armed robbers known as the "Scarecrow Bandits" that had robbed more than 20 Texas banks, it came up with a novel method of locating the thieves.

FBI agents obtained logs from mobile phone companies corresponding to what their cellular towers had recorded at the time of a dozen different bank robberies in the Dallas area. The voluminous records showed that two phones had made calls around the time of all 12 heists, and that those phones belonged to men named Tony Hewitt and Corey Duffey. A jury eventually convicted the duo of multiple bank robbery and weapons charges.

Even though police are tapping into the locations of mobile phones thousands of times a year, the legal ground rules remain unclear, and federal privacy laws written a generation ago are ambiguous at best. On Friday, the first federal appeals court to consider the topic will hear oral arguments (PDF) in a case that could establish new standards for locating wireless devices.

In that case, the Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in their--or at least their cell phones'--whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that "a customer's Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records" that show where a mobile device placed and received calls.

Those claims have alarmed the ACLU and other civil liberties groups, which have opposed the Justice Department's request and plan to tell the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia that Americans' privacy deserves more protection and judicial oversight than what the administration has proposed.

(More at the link)

 

hmmmmm.......

 

I don't mind it.

 

At issue here is privacy. When you buy a cell phone and service, you do give the carrier permission to provide location based services, especially E911. E911 is where you dial 911 and your physical location is sent to the cops; if you need an ambulance or something, this is a perfectly good thing.

When we find a terrorist's laptop computer and find phone numbers on the disk, there's a time is of the essence issue. The govt. needs to tap those phone numbers and anyone calling them to prevent or thwart the plans of non-US citizens who are our enemies. At least one of the phone numbers in question is known, and a warrant is a foregone conclusion

Time isn't of the essence when the govt. is looking at past records, up to a year old (see the article). It's not unreasonable, nor does it hinder law enforcement to have to get a warrant to inspect those past records. And in the case mentioned, no phone number was known, nor was any individual known, so a warrant would not be a foregone conclusion.

The case mentioned in the article had nothing to do with homeland security. While I stated I support the lack or delayed acquisition of warrants in some cases, I am quite sure that the sort of thing that homeland security should be doing has nothing to do with domestic crime.

I also quite believe that the location information is in the category of a person's papers or effects. Specifically as mentioned in the 4th amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

 

I guess I don't really care if the government tracks where I am at all times.
The cell phone companies already track where I am, and I trust the government a lot more than I trust AT&T & Verizon.

barfo