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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."
Isn't any tourist ("foreign body") in the US by definition a suspect terrorist under the new definition?
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
But I thought that in the eyes of the Federal Government we were all guilty of a crime anyway?
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
make you go HMM.
FBI: We need to tap his phone to prove he committed a crime.
Court: You need to prove he committed a crime to tap his phone.
In the last year or so, cell phone tracking of criminals has lost its value more and more.
As more cell phone evidence has been submitted in court, the more loopholes have opened up.
One of my importer/exporter customers already pulls his battery when hitting the road. Before dumping the battery back in, he picks a random sim card. I set every sim card to ring the same voice mail on "Missed Calls" so he can easily find out what he missed.
No black market businessman is stupid anymore. Hell, there are entire newsletters now offering advice on how to avoid mistakes that might get you in trouble.
Like this decision really matters when you have this coming...
Tracking Cell Phones for Real-Time Traffic Data:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/16/07621
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.
So if you want to commit a crime and have an alibi, AND frame someone else:
- leave your phone turned on at home but with the ringer off
- get another phone, clone the sim card of the person you want to frame
- just before its time to do the crime, borrow their phone to make a quick call, then TURN IT OFF!
- go to the location where you
- insert battery into cloned phone
- do the nasty deed
- make a call to your real cell phone, leave 20 sec of dead air.
- remove battery from cloned phone
- 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.To get a search warrant or a wire tap they have to meet the same test. On the other hand, they are allowed to follow you around at will. I wonder when they will get a law saying that all the video cameras in the city have to be connected to their central server. Then they'll be able to 'follow' you around without leaving the comfort of their desks.
As the article states, this is in response to the rising civil liberties violations thanks to the U SAP AT RIOT Act.
Ultimately, as long as you are on US soil, you have the right to due process no matter who you blew up. Of course, get caught by us anywhere else and you could find yourself in Guantanamo. I believe that is what you are talking about, concerning "terrorists."
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Here is the New York decisions.
Unfonatly that link in the OP is very lacking on specific and explaining some details. Here is a quick description and judges reasoning.
1) the FBI asked for the cell towers used so they would have a rough idea of the location the person was located.
2) In most cases this has been easy to get since the Supreme Court has declared that a person has no expectation of privacy with the numbers that are dialed so also as the FBI says the information is relavent the courts allow easy access. The FBI claims that the tower being used for "control codes" is at the same level of expected privacy as phone number, they also used some other laws such as the Stored Communication Act to prove they should have that level of access.
3) in the New York case the judges ruled that this was not the case and the tower being used is different. "When the government seeks to turn a mobile telephone into a means for contemporaneously tracking the movements of its user, the delicately balanced compromise that Congress has forged between effective law enforcement and individual privacy requires a showing of probable cause,"
So it looks like Congress will probaly need to give some more specifications on what they mean.
One of my importer/exporter customers already pulls his battery when hitting the road. Before dumping the battery back in, he picks a random sim card. I set every sim card to ring the same voice mail on "Missed Calls" so he can easily find out what he missed.
I have to ask: what's this guy hiding from? And doesn't going to this kind of trouble pretty much scream, "I'M UP TO SOMETHING!"?
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.
No batteries, SIM cards.
I recently found a huge phone company selling 5000 $50 prepaid SIM cards for $50,000 with NOTHING MORE than filling out a form that isn't verified. $50,000 gets you 5000 anonymous sim cards with nearly 500,000 minutes. $1500 cash gets you 100 used phones with 100 IMEI numbers.
So a gang has nothing to worry about, yet an innocent person can easily break hundreds of laws without realizing it.
I'm no tin foil conspiracy theorist, but I work 2 days a month near a federal courthouse and love to sit in on trials. Sit through just one and you'll never vote again.
Want more rulings like this?
Donate to the EFF They wrote briefs for these cases.
Remember: the rights you save may be your own.
- Neil Wehneman
P.S. More information is at the EFF coverage of the cases.
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
When the FBI went to do wiretaps on regular phones, they ended up having to have a court order and evidence of a crime being committed or in progress. This is much the same thing, however there is a much bigger effort involved. To get the cellular company to track your phone:
1 - It won't be accurate as GPS
2 - It won't be easy, and will take much effort
3 - Cellular is much easier than Voice over WiFi, but still takes a lot of work
4 - Tracking the location of a cellular phone is nearly stupid, especially if its a 'go' phone that you can simply throw away
5 - Knowing where a phone is, doesn't tell the cops anything unless they can also prove you were with it
The technical issues around this are just too many to make it of any real use. Real bad guys (not the stupid ones) already know how to get around this. If you are not a bad guy, you are not worth the effort to get a court order for, and believe me, cellular companies are not going to go through the motions without a warrant (I have some experience here) because it costs money. Tracking joe bloggs' cell phone just for kicks is not going to happen.
The more interesting things that can be done is to use the cellphone service to locate possible victims in collapsed buildings etc. in a disaster. Say, New Orleans 9th ward, if there is a working cellphone found, there is probably someone with it. Tracking cellphone positions (without personally identifying information) can lead to better service if you know where they are all at (usually) during different periods of the day. There are social welfare implications to this type of knowledge, and they are good things too. The trouble is that it will take something like an IBM supercomputer to collect and use the information in a useful way.
Until the police / authorities run the cellular networks, there is not a lot to worry about on this particular issue.
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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.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
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.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
The UK security service (MI5) doesn't need a court order to access traffic data, which includes tracking your mobile phone. If you find out you've been tracked (or bugged, or burgled) you can complain to a tribunal, but "In the course of their existence, no complaints have ever been upheld by the interception of communications tribunal, security service tribunal and intelligence services tribunal." - The Guardian
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. :)
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The sad thing is, this won't stop the FBI from doing it. They'll just request the information without a court order. Most people don't know their rights, and if an FBI agent comes up to them and tells them to provide information, they'll probably comply.
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".
FalconShould there be a Law?