New Limits to FBI Tracking of Cell Phone Users

EvilTwinSkippy writes "According to the Washington Post (free registration), Two Federal Courts have seperately ruled that the FBI may not track the location of cell phone users without proof that a crime has been committed, or is in progress. The cases involve the FBI seeking court orders to track suspects in real-time using the mobile phone network as part of an ongoing investigation."

Comments

i dont get it

[Anonymous Coward]

lots of crimes are commited every day, does this mean that anyone can be investigated following any crime?
thats what it sounds like. no i didnt rtfa

Like this really matters, when you have....

[Anonymous Coward]

Like this decision really matters when you have this coming...

Tracking Cell Phones for Real-Time Traffic Data:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/16/076217 &tid=215&tid=126

Just like with the "traffic" cameras everywhere now... once they're in, they use them for whatever they want.

Don't think so? FOIA your local surveillance-equipped local police station & ask them how they have been using these "traffic" cameras.

And quote "traffic" because that is what they were sold to the taxpayers as. We were ensured that they would not be used for anything other than that and there would not be any privacy violations etc.

Just turn it OFF

[tomhudson]

or if you're REALLY paranoid, do one or more of these:

1. remove battery
2. wrap in tin foil
3. "forget it" in neighbours' car

So if you want to commit a crime and have an alibi, AND frame someone else:

1. leave your phone turned on at home but with the ringer off
2. get another phone, clone the sim card of the person you want to frame
3. just before its time to do the crime, borrow their phone to make a quick call, then TURN IT OFF!
4. go to the location where you
   1. insert battery into cloned phone
   2. do the nasty deed
   3. make a call to your real cell phone, leave 20 sec of dead air.
   4. remove battery from cloned phone
5. return home

"You" have never left home. "They" were at the scene of the crime. If their phone has roaming, and it was out of their primary area, their cell bill will "prove" they were there with the call to your phone. You==alibi, them==fucked.

They'll adapt the al-Qaida way

[bogaboga]

Terrorists will simply adapt the Al-Qaida way. That is, horse-back or any primitive means. The FBI seems to think that terrorists are stupid. This is way we have failed to capture Bin Laden even after spending close to $1.3 billion in efforts to find him.

If one writes about possible rains or a harvest or even congratulates somebody for fathering a child, yet the actual meaning behind this is a facilitation of terrorist activity, this is very dangerous. This is the Al-Qaida way. We as Americans cannot succeed in such an environment.

That is why for example, IEDs are exploding daily, killing and maiming our GIs despite the fact that Baghdad was "combed" by coalition forces. To me, this is a wasted effort by the FBI. They should devise more effective means to deliver.

Re:Oh nothing officer, just some innocent skulking

[dada21]

As a business owner, even if you have no criminal intent, you have way more reason to hide your tracks.

There are so many conflicting or vague laws on the books. Now that years of your past can be discovered with a click, and jury nullification practically illegal, any future mistake might be wrangled into a harsher penalty through digging by our crazed public prosecutors.

I've seen many innocent and honest people go to jail over an accountant's error. I've seen bail withheld in a tariff case because the distributor bought locally-made products containing 'tainted' products, and the feds dug up evidence of past sales online that MIGHT have been illegal.

RICO, PATRIOT, Magic Lantern, EPIC and other legal tools are used hundreds of times more against non-criminals. If you're seeing slow business or are broke, dump F/OSS and help people express their fourth amendment rights. You'll never go hungry again.

Re:Oh nothing officer, just some innocent skulking

[John Jorsett]

I have to ask: why is it that someone that wants his privacy, and takes steps to ensure it, automatically "hiding from somthing"?

What happened to innocent until proven guilty?

Nobody said he was guilty of anything. In the normal course of things, your privacy comes from being one fish in a big school, with nobody paying you any attention. If you're going to extraordinary measures, it means you: 1) think your activities are illicit, 2)somebody is or will be surveilling you, or 3)somebody is or will be trying to find you. Hence my question

Re:OR.. they are a terrorist?

[v1]

Actually not true. The president (and maybe others?) has the authority to label a person or a group as "enemy combatants". At that point it does not matter WHO you are. You can be a tourist from Europe, a 4th generation Texan, or the Czar of Russia, it really does not matter. Once you are an Enemy Combatant, you are nobody. They can kill you, lock you up and throw away the key, and basically you have no rights. No right to habeus corpus (sp?), no right of attourney, no right of trial by jury, and certainly no right to a speedy trial. Your life and fredom is their whim at that point.

Because of this, no one has guaranteed fredom or guaranteed rights in the US anymore. With those two words all your rights get taken away and you just basically don't exist anymore. There is no appeal, no review, no limits. If it happens to you, there is simply nothing anyone can do to help you. To say someone has rights, EXCEPT if someone decides they don't, means you never had any rights to begin with. Anything so easily taken away does not truly exist.

Clarification

[Bob9113]

Just to clarify for the "what's he trying to hide" people. What the finding states is that the FBI must have proof that a crime has been committed. That is, they can't just pick people that they think are dirty and start tracking them unless there is a crime. This seems like the fundamental basis of police protection - their job is to investigate crimes and prosecute the perps. Not to monitor people they don't like in case they commit a crime. The crime has to come before the surveillance.

Do you disagree? Do you think the FBI should act as our watchers before any crime is committed?

I don't. I think the FBI's job starts when a crime occurs.

Keeping my old phone

[nido]

I've had my phone for over 3 years now, same battery, a little worse for wear (some lines in the screen have gone out). My aunt's phone died recently, so I called up Verizon and tried to transfer my phone to her. (I have another phone of the same model that I was going to switch to.) "Sorry, we can't add any phones that aren't GPS-enabled". Hmm? FCC dictate since May 2005, I guess. All the more reason for me to keep it. :)

jury nullification practically illegal

[falconwolf]

Not many even know about jury nullification, but some judges and prosecutors try to weed those who believe in nullification from juries. It's not uncommon for jurors to be told to judge the case on the facts and not the law. It's such a shame when Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams and other Founding Fathers of the USA believed in it so much.

In 1789 TJ said "I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." John Adams goes "It is not only the juror's right, but his duty to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgement and conscience, though in direct opposition to the instruction of the court." And Jame Madison's quote is "It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their choice, if the laws are so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they... undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow".

Falcon