I’ve suspected something like this for a long time but as usual, it’s depressing to see yet another civil liberty confirmed taken away from us.
Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers.
In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime. Privacy advocates fear such a practice may expose average Americans to a new level of government scrutiny of their daily lives.
In other words, if you have a cell phone, the government can use it to track you in real time. Not only can they do this, but they do this even without evidence of a crime. They just say “We want this tracking data.”
Using these in connection with finding an obvious criminal fugitive is one thing. Using it just to track people because they might be doing something unsavory is illegal.
As the government has said, “change your definition of privacy.” You have none in this country. The enablers will say that “well if you aren’t being a criminal, you have nothing to worry about.”
What if somebody on your cell phone list calls somebody connected through the government’s Six Degrees Of Being A Terrorist program? Ooops, you’re a suspect now. You’re subject to your own government spying on you now. You’ve done nothing wrong, but the government can and will track your every location that you and your cell phone go to.
Maybe they’ll track everybody that’s ever called your cell phone, too. Your family, your friends, your boss, the nice neighbor lady next door who lets your cat out. You’re being lo-jacked. Hey, you might be a terrorist.
Pretty soon, we’re all potential terrorists. Innocent until proven guilty is antiquated, 9/10 thinking. We’re simply a nation of potential suspects. But people are fighting it.
“Most people don’t realize it, but they’re carrying a tracking device in their pocket,” said Kevin Bankston of the privacy advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Cellphones can reveal very precise information about your location, and yet legal protections are very much up in the air.”
In a stinging opinion this month, a federal judge in Texas denied a request by a Drug Enforcement Administration agent for data that would identify a drug trafficker’s phone location by using the carrier’s E911 tracking capability. E911 tracking systems read signals sent to satellites from a phone’s Global Positioning System (GPS) chip or triangulated radio signals sent from phones to cell towers. Magistrate Judge Brian L. Owsley, of the Corpus Christi division of the Southern District of Texas, said the agent’s affidavit failed to focus on “specifics necessary to establish probable cause, such as relevant dates, names and places.”
Owsley decided to publish his opinion, which explained that the agent failed to provide “sufficient specific information to support the assertion” that the phone was being used in “criminal” activity. Instead, Owsley wrote, the agent simply alleged that the subject trafficked in narcotics and used the phone to do so. The agent stated that the DEA had ” ‘identified’ or ‘determined’ certain matters,” Owsley wrote, but “these identifications, determinations or revelations are not facts, but simply conclusions by the agency.”
The government simply will ignore this. In fact, they already are.
Instead of seeking warrants based on probable cause, some federal prosecutors are applying for orders based on a standard lower than probable cause derived from two statutes: the Stored Communications Act and the Pen Register Statute, according to judges and industry lawyers. The orders are typically issued by magistrate judges in U.S. district courts, who often handle applications for search warrants.
In one case last month in a southwestern state, an FBI agent obtained precise location data with a court order based on the lower standard, citing “specific and articulable facts” showing reasonable grounds to believe the data are “relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation,” said Al Gidari, a partner at Perkins Coie in Seattle, who reviews data requests for carriers.
Another magistrate judge, who has denied about a dozen such requests in the past six months, said some agents attach affidavits to their applications that merely assert that the evidence offered is “consistent with the probable cause standard” of Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. The judge spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
“Law enforcement routinely now requests carriers to continuously ‘ping’ wireless devices of suspects to locate them when a call is not being made . . . so law enforcement can triangulate the precise location of a device and [seek] the location of all associates communicating with a target,” wrote Christopher Guttman-McCabe, vice president of regulatory affairs for CTIA — the Wireless Association, in a July comment to the Federal Communications Commission. He said the “lack of a consistent legal standard for tracking a user’s location has made it difficult for carriers to comply” with law enforcement agencies’ demands.
Gidari, who also represents CTIA, said he has never seen such a request that was based on probable cause.
Got that? A lower standard of probable cause. The government mandates that cell phone carriers have to maintain this real-time tracking data “for public safety.” Then they declare that because the carriers are doing this, then the government has full rights and access to this data. This dangerous precedent means that thousands of companies that collect data on Americans are according to the government actually contractors in the “public safety” business and should be forced to turn over that data when the government deems it necessary.
Government mandates companies collect data on you. Government wants that data. Government uses it against whomever it wants to, whenever it wants to. End of line.
Your privacy is a commodity on sale to the highest bidder. And in the end the highest bidder is the government.
One of several good reasons not to own one. So glad I don’t.
I think it will only get worse. There are development plans for e-location or co-location services. The idea here is if you walk by a coke machine, that machine talks to you and says “wouldn’t you like a coke?” which can be purchased by your cell phone as a wallet device.
If you saw the film, “Minority Report” it had stores talking to you when you walked in, a lot of tracking, real time of people, their shopping habits and so on.
If we do not get into technology as a right of privacy, it will make the do not call list battle look like a wade in the kiddie pool.
that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
if you don’t have a cell phone, or you turn it off, you may be able to minimize the opportunities to track you, but not having one, l don’t know if the gps function can be disabled or if it is root to the program.
gps transponders are used for any number of purposes besides cell phones. to avoid the delays when using certain toll roads, a transponder can be installed in your vehicle that registers when you pass a toll booth/station. gps tracking systems are employed by many municipalities, as well as major corporations to keep track of their employees, and vehicles, information which is used in puntive ways to ‘keep them in line’. p.i.’s and jealous spouses are placing gps transponders in the vehicles of their targets; parents put them in their kids cars to keep track of where they are, how fast they’re going, etc.; and if you have a newer vehicle with an “on star” type service, or on board navigation system, bingo! gotcha!
the devices are relatively inexpensive, and there are myriad programs and services available to monitor them. a quick google search of ‘gps trackers’ nets 260,000 hits.
the next step is bio-metrics, currently being field tested and perfected in fallujah, and is now finding it’s way intp commercial ventures, including as a substitute for credit/debit cards as seen in this BBC short on fingerprint shopping…yeah, all that data out there to be mined, and all one has to do is hype it as the latest thing and people fall all over themselves to be the first in line to get it.
it’s amazing that we managed to survive for so long without all these devices to make our lives easier…to catalog and track, as it turns out.
gives new meaning to the old mabell refrain: reach out and touch someone.
lTMF’sA
Turn it off.
It is becoming an entitlement. With the advent of cell phone one citizen become entitled to talk to any other citizen any time or any place during the day. Should they not be able to contact you immediately, right now this second, these people get pissed.
And yes Lord I am still practicing my Apocalyptic horse riding skills.
http://www.boomantribune.com/comments/2007/11/23/19023/434/2#2
In grad classes on telecommunications, I ask adults: “Why do you feel you need to be in constant touch?” We didn’t have this need a decade ago. We didn’t have the expectation that we had to answer the phone immediately whenever it rang, and tell people our location and position.That’s why answering machines were invented.
The psychology must be complex and ultimately, very dangerous to our sense of freedom. Maybe it’s deliberate.
Agreed that it’s deliberate.
The company I work for has a standard issue laptop/Blackberry/cell phone combo for most of management. It’s deliberate because over the last decade or so we’ve already surrendered these rights to the people we work for.
A merely 40 hour work week is thoughtcrime in America. I know, I work in IT, and part of my job is supporting the systems that allow people to “work from home”. Weekends, nights, holidays are dirty words, just because you have them means you should make use of them in the name of quarterly profits. You’re expected to be in constant contact with the company, with clients, with co-workers.
We long ago abandoned these rights to the companies that employ us, so that they can exploit us in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible. You’re a company drone, and to get ahead we have to give up our rights and liberties, or we will be replaced by somebody who is more willing.
Now the government is in the business.