Feds want cell phone locations without warrant

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Feds want cell phone locations without warrant
Showdown on closely watched issue unfolding in federal appeals court
By Maryclaire Dale

updated 2 hours, 26 minutes ago

PHILADELPHIA - Should the government be able to track your movements based on cell phone records, without evidence of criminal wrongdoing?

A legal showdown on the closely watched issue unfolded Friday in a federal appeals court in Philadelphia, as the Justice Department battled electronic privacy groups.

The Justice Department wants to get the cell-phone location information without showing probable cause of a crime. Opponents say the data could show when someone visits a church, medical clinic or political rally.

Appellate Judge Dolores Sloviter wondered aloud what a rogue government might do with such information.



Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35368525/ns/business/

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Private employers have your cell phone location with the GPS built inside of them.

Feds think they're our boss, that's all.

[Better Today]

33. I have my GPS turned off, or at least I went through the motions of

turning it off on my cellphone. Can they still track a phone that has utiliized the "turn off" option? I guess they can when in use, but if one is just carrying it? I don't know.

[FiveGoodMen]

2. Why is that even up for debate?

How low are we really going to sink?

America? Are you listening? Hello?

[bobburgster]

3. This is crazy!

It is insane to give them carte blanche!

[virgogal]

4. As an old lady speaking I fear that all privacy has been lost already ----forever.

[Chicago dyke]

5. as a middle aged lady

i agree. anyone who thinks they have privacy today is sadly fooling themselves. sorry, that horse is long gone from the barn...

[virgogal]

7. Yep ! eom

[davepc]

6. A nice dose of hope and change from the Obama justice department

[The abyss]

8. I feel so much safer already!

<>

[AzDar]

9. No.

:grr:

[pleah]

10. Ha! I don't own a cell phone.

:P and the answer to the question: NO!

[yava]

19. I don't either but we do pay with our credit cards

I try to pay cash most of the time but still...

[pleah]

21. We only use ours in emergencies, I haven't used mine in two years. n/t

[Smashcut]

11. A visual representation of the 4th Amendment under Bush and now Obama

[kleec]

12. Privacy

in this country has long been a thing of the past. It's a terrible thing in a 'democracy', as an old lady myself I really miss the country that was.

[yava]

20. they will put chips into consumer products from clothes to..

your shoes and your bottle of wine and when you move close to a captor, like at airports and other security sites, it will read where you bought each item, and which credit card holder aid for it.
The sad thing is that there are almost no more laws restricting the use of such info.
Imagine if some day somewhere, it were necessary to go against a war or a government, the people would have no chance.
Thanks to technology...

[JDPriestly]

22. I don't understand why people want to put all the details about their

private lives on FaceBook. If you do that, you have no privacy at all.

[Arctic Al]

13. When are we going to wake up and put an end to this?

the Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no "reasonable expectation of privacy"

I believe that it no longer matters which party is in office, our freedom and our rights have been stolen.

"The People" need to set aside differences and restore our country.


Patriots Must Hang Together,
or We'll All Hang Separately.

AL

[No Elephants]

26. Maybe the D of J argued that we have no reasonable expectation that our cell phone

data will be private? The argument could not possibly have been that Americans have no reasonable expection of privacy, period. The judge would have laughed them out of court or thrown them out, one or the other.

Don't know what your idea of a patriot is, Al. If is something along the lines of the supposedly non partisan Tea Party, though, I don't think this is the board for you. Just sayin'.

[Arctic Al]

30. It appears that I am not alone in my beliefs...

I do not like that the fed gov wants the ability to track me using my cell phone.

I do not like the patriot act, and the fed govs ability to tap my phone and e-mails at their whim.

I do not like having to appear naked to fly in an airplane.

I do not like the erosion of my 4th amendment just because I'm in my vehicle.

I do not like search and seizure laws.

I do not wish to trade my freedom for security.

I have been subjected to background checks, finger prints, retinal scans, and cleared by the USCG, the FBI, and Homeland Security. I must have, on my person at all times, these credentials (papers) just to do my job and earn my living. Yet everytime I turn around, the state still wants to aim a camera at me or shove a gps locator up my rear...It's wrong, and people damn well know it.

Perhaps you are correct, maybe I should take a closer look at the tea party. Its obvious neither Dems nor Repubs give a rats ass about us or our rights.

[CynicalObserver]

35. I think the future, under either major party (which it will be, whichever it is)

is a world where the State has (already, probably) massive amounts of compiled to-the-minute information on its subjects - your probable location, via cell, your car if gps is built in's location, credit card history, rfid tag history tagged by credit card or tagged as probably you by being read at same time as a known factor (cell, for example), call history, all your recent texts/emails/facebook/etc. contributions, etc, not to mention vehicle movement via toll booths or other mechanisms (such as in the UK). Imagine living in a world where everything you do today that is trackable will be retrievable FOREVER by the Authority.

Authority WILL abuse this data, eventually, in the next year, or 5 or 10 or 20. It is the nature of government to expand its power. In this case, imagine posting a political opinion today that becomes super-verboten down the road. you apply for a govt job in 2019, and this is flagged on a background check. no Job.

Imagine running for office against the controlling party down the road. Something you did 10 years before can be dragged out (whatever it is, very few people live lives that are 100% open books and transparent in terms of finding something to use against them in a political race).

These are the velvet-glove type examples. If you want to go Orwellian, Big Brother could only dream of an information apparatus like that being built before our eyes.

it is nice to see that some posters here realize how scary this is.

[Autumn]

32. Very good post Arctic Al.

Welcome to DU.:hi:

[boppers]

14. People are broadcasting their location, but want it kept secret anyways?

The intersection of privacy and technology is quite interesting in a society where people don't seem to understand the technology... I'm reminded of the folks who wanted search warrants for seeing web pages, or claimed they were "tapped" because their emails were read by unintended recipients... If you don't want to broadcast your location, stop carrying a device that broadcasts your location. Sheesh.

Up next, people complaining that they were followed when "the government" read their tweets.

[24601]

15. They can have my cell location - as long as the cell company

doesn't (or can't) link that cell # to me or anybody else without my consent or a court order.

ROTFLMAO! - does anybody think they don't already have our names indexed to cell numbers?

I'm VERY disappointed in this administration.

But they probably know that - does anybody think they don't already have our screen names indexed to our e-mail accounts, and our names indexed to those?

[justabob]

25. you're right

I am sure we are all very neatly filed email/screen name/phone etc, but I still don't want them to have an official piece of paper saying it is ok for them to do it. Maybe that is silly, but I think it matters.

[No Elephants]

28. It mattered in Boston in 1774 under King George. It mattered in Boston in

2006 under King George.

And it matters in Boston in 2010 under Obama. (I can't make up my mind yet if he seems like he he wants to be King or President, or something in between.)

[endless october]

16. 4th Amendment doesn't allow this.

get a warrant.

[midnight]

17. K&R.

[robcon]

18. I don't think I want the government to know where I am.

My location, and my cellphone use, is my business, and there has to be probable cause to reveal that info to the government.

[justabob]

23. no no no

I am really tired of the assault on civil liberties of all kinds. I have completely worn myself out over it during the last several years. I can't even dredge up the outrage anymore. I guess the good news is that the judge sounds like a sane person.

[PSPS]

24. I'll be glad when bush is out of office.

I'm beginning to loathe obama as much as I did bush.

[Vidar]

31. Yep, this shit is all too familiar.

[No Elephants]

27. Remember when Obama campaigned re: FISA? Ah, good times.

Anyhoo. I found a local story with a little more meat on the bones than the msnbc article in the OP. All I can say is, thank heaven for good judges and not for profit organizations willing to go to court to fight for our rights. Little did I know I want desperately want them to do that when Democrats were in charge of the country. Please support whatever good ones you can.

The story:



"If you're a cellular-phone user, can you expect your records - when and where calls are made and received - to be private? If police want access to your data because they believe a crime has been committed, how much evidence should they have to produce? Should a search warrant be required? hose critical questions were argued today in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the the Third Circuit in Philadelphia in a closely watched drug-trafficking case with broad implications for the emerging law of digital privacy.

The hearing centered on a 2008 ruling by a Pittsburgh magistrate judge who denied a request by federal law-enforcement agents for the cell-phone records of a person under investigation - information showing the location of towers used to connect his calls and the times. The agents contended they were entitled to the records without a search warrant, that the federal statute required only a showing of "reasonable suspicion" of a crime. The judge ruled a warrant was needed. The U.S. Justice Department appealed.

In its appellate brief, the Justice Department said getting the cell data was imperative "because the subject and his confederates use a variety of vehicles and properties to conduct their illegal activities," and "physical surveillance has proven difficult." Arguing the department's case today, lawyer Mark Eckenwiler emphasized that the government was not seeking the content of the calls. Nonetheless, Judge Dolores Sloviter saw a problem. She said that cell-site location data, obtained without a court's review, could be used by an unscrupulous government to track dissidents.

"As I work on this, I listen to the news," she said, "and there are governments . . . like Iran, that might want to know whether its people have been at a protest. . . . Don't we have to be concerned about that?" Sloviter said she was not suggesting that such abuses of power were happening in the United States, only that the court, in interpreting the law, must be mindful of the opportunities for abuse.

Supporters of digital privacy lined up with Kevin Bankston, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital-rights advocacy group based in San Francisco. Search warrants - demanding not just "reasonable suspicion" but the higher standard of "probable cause" - should be required, he told the court. University of San Francisco law professor Susan Freiwald, permitted to argue as part of Bankston's friend-of-the-court brief, warned that without such a safeguard the government could turn a cell phone into an unseen "tracker" of "where we went, and how long we've been there."

Legal experts said the Third Circuit court was the first federal appeals court to consider the issue. "The way the Constitution was framed, when it came down to information as basic and personal as where you are, at what time, who you visit, and where, the framers thought the government should only have access to that if there is probable cause to think a crime was committed," said David Kairys, professor of constitutional law at Temple University Law School.

More at link http://www.philly.com/inquirer/breaking/news_breaking/20100212_Oourt_hearing_argues_cell-phone_privacy_rights.html


I know the Justice Department was claiming that it felt obliged to defend all laws of Congress, but this is not a law of Congress, just overreaching by law enforcement. So, what's the excuse here?

Think I may start calling it the United States Injustice Department.

[Dream Detector 2010]

29. If you're not doing anything wrong

Then what's the problem? Gobama! This is the change I've been hoping for!

[CynicalObserver]

36. sounds good, as long as you remember that 'wrong' is defined by

the State, not you. At some point down the road, the State will interpret 'wrong' in ways that make you wonder how you could be so blind.

It is human nature for a decent % of any population to support greater and greater central authority and control over their lives, even though many of those supporters are under the impression the laws will impact those they dislike more than themselves.

[Odin2005]

34. WTF is this shit?

[buckrogers1965]

37. It is easy.

The police have no more right to your location via phone GPS than I do.

Surprising isn't it? But it is true. Police have no more right to search anyone than any other private citizen. The police are no more able to search someones private records or house or person or vehicle than you or I can.

But you say, they need to search people to find criminals. That is absolutely right.

So how do they get the ability to search someone? With evidence of probable cause they are able to goto a judge and request that judge to grant them the ability to search a specific place for a evidence of a specific crime.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

They are not constitutionally allowed to do search you without evidence of a crime. Period. And it doesn't matter where you are standing or if you are a citizen or not.

The fact that our rights are so brazenly trampled at the border (which now is 100 miles wide) or with our phone and Internet records is just more and more evidence of how far we have descended towards a police state.

It is sad and it is pathetic. And most Americans are complete sheep about it.