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Legal Battles Over Cellphone Tracking
stupefaction writes "The New York Times reports on recent successful court challenges to police use of cellphone tracking information in the course of an investigation. From the article: 'In the last four months, three federal judges have denied prosecutors the right to get cellphone tracking information from wireless companies without first showing "probable cause" to believe that a crime has been or is being committed. That is the same standard applied to requests for search warrants. [...] Cellular operators like Verizon Wireless and Cingular Wireless know, within about 300 yards, the location of their subscribers whenever a phone is turned on.'"
It's a lot closer than that. I used to work for one of the companies that designed this technology.
So in other words, we know the cops are trying to abuse the technology when they have no reason to do so, since they don't even have enough proof to show that a crime has been committed. Sounds like the usual bunch of guys wanting to track their wives or hunt down the guy who cut him off in traffic that morning. I wonder how many of them sit around all day whining that they get no "respect" from the citizenry?
Does it mean that the police can track any criminal as long as his cell phone is turned on?? One more reason for not having a cell phone, or rather having one but no phone number
You just got troll'd!
http://www.spywareinfo.com/articles/cell_phones/
As a general rule, I always turn off the location settings on my phone. Sprint has had this feature enabled by default for the past 3 years, and it wasn't until recently that I learned I was broadcasting my whereabouts 24x7.
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You know, when the police don't need warrents for searches your country is called a police state. On a related note, nice to see the patriot[sic] act extended for another four years.
Shh.
Not totally familiar with cellular technology...
How different is this from GPS? And is this a cheaper alternative that could be provided for cell phone users wanting GPS on their cell phones?
ZEN is a prime number in base-36
That info could also clear you of a crime.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
We can't have people's civil rights get in the way of law enforcement. We need to change the law to keep the courts out of this. The courts have no right getting involved in these matters.
*That'll* fix those Satanic, Evolution-loving, Commie Terrorists!
(/tongue in cheek)
There, I believe I've insulted enough Conservatives for one day. I'll go now.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
In the last four months, three federal judges have denied prosecutors the right to get cellphone tracking information
So if I got this right, in recent years our rights were outright ignored, all this while in the name of the fight against terror even more legislation hindering our rights were regularly called for. And now I'm supposed to feel better because of THREE recents cases where judges actually did their jobs? Dunno, I don't have A.D.D, I'm lucid enough to see a situation of "three steps back, one step forward" when I see one.
When I see "Cell Phone Tracking" I can't help but think of Elmer Fud saying, "Be wery wery quite. I'm tracking cell phones. He, he, he"
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Let them track me. I don't care.
'Cellular operators like Verizon Wireless and Cingular Wireless know, within about 300 yards, the location of their subscribers whenever a phone is turned on.'
They may be able to track the location of the telephone, or the SIM card,/b> but not the subscriber.
A different thing alltogether - if you think about it. This cannot be used to locate a suspect on a crime scene, only her phone.
These denials by the court judges is not good at all. This will lead to a law that permits law enforcement agencies to track cell phones without the courts approval.
"If I'm on an investigation and I need to know where somebody is located who might be committing a crime . . ."
I don't see what everyone's worried about. They just want to track anyone who might be commiting a crime.
Shouldn't they need a search warrant (that requires probable cause) to get any of my information from the phone company? It mentions a warrant of some kind was needed. Shouldn't probable cause be required for all warrants? Want to search my home? The police need probable cause. Want to search my bank records, I'd like to hope you need probable cause. Want to find out who I've rung up? I hope you need probable cause. Want to follow me, I'd hope you need probable cause.
If I'm on an investigation and I need to know where somebody is located who might be committing a crime, or, worse, might have a hostage, real-time knowledge of where this person is could be a matter of life or death."
Let's pretend he doesn't have a phone. Don't you need probable cause to search through his belongings (home/work-place/car)? Tough luck mate. But you can't just screw people over in the name of national security. Well, at least you couldn't.....
corroborating their whereabouts with witness accounts
Well get probable cause. Sheeesh. Or ask the person to give the police permission to look at his phone record location.
or helping build a case for a wiretap on the phone
Wait, you want to be able to access someone's phone records willy-nilly, so you can build up a case to access their phone records even more? Am I the only one to think this is crazy?
And the government is not required to report publicly when it makes such requests.
Now that's scary. I can understand them wanting to keep it quiet at the time it's happening, but come on. A week, or at most a month, should be sufficient time to no longer be crucial, especially if you're using it to obtain a hostage or arrest them. The only reason to keep it secret indefinitely is so you can to pull the wool over people's eyes as you widdle away their civil liberties.
Prosecutors, while acknowledging that they have to get a court order before obtaining real-time cell-site data, argue that the relevant standard is found in a 1994 amendment to the 1986 Stored Communications Act, a law that governs some aspects of cellphone surveillance.
That's a joke. How could the congressmen in 1986 have any idea what sort of application and usage cell-phones would have 10 years in the future? They probably gave wide-powers to the police, because at the time, it wasn't possible (and perhaps not even thinkable) for them to use those powers. You can't blame them for not forseeing the future, and to claim they did and that the law should still be used is ridiculous. That's like claiming the right to bear arms in the constitution gives every citizen the right to have nuclear weapons. There was no way nuclear weapons were invisaged when America was formed.
The standard calls for the government to show "specific and articulable facts" that demonstrate that the records sought are "relevant and material to an ongoing investigation" - a standard lower than the probable-cause hurdle.
The language is very telling. "Oh it's just a necessity in our way. We don't need to worry about that." I believe perhaps the standard should be raised, especially with an opinion like that.
Prosecutors in the recent cases also unsuccessfully argued that the expanded police powers under the USA Patriot Act could be read as allowing cellphone tracking under a standard lower than probable cause.
God bless us. Every one. (Thankfully they have been unsuccessful, although is that 100% of the time? I don't think so.)
In the digital era, what's on the envelope and what's inside of it, "have absolutely blurred," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy advocacy group.
And so the prosecution predictably wants it to be treated as if it were all on the envelope.
And that makes it harder for courts to determine whether a certain digital surveillance method invokes Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches.
As a general rule, I always turn off the location settings on my phone.
That will help but it won't solve the problem even if you manage to turn out any kind of E911 related GPS system (I am assuming that is what you are talking about) that may be built into your mobile phone. The thing is that every time that you use the phone your service provider can still track your location since they know which GSM cell you are in and they can even roughly position you within the cell without ever retrieving any location data from your phone. This is done by using data retrieved from the GSM trancievers in each cell which allows your sevice provider or anybody they are cooperating with to approximately calculate your location. They can even trigger interactions with your phone to discover your location without you ever using it, of course this only works if you keep it switched on all the time. Then of course there are military systems used for tracking GSM phones (among other things) which are much more powerful.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Almost all newer model LG phones come with a rudimentary GPS unit in them. Some models (5550) even allow you to see your co-ordinates. I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes more common, why build up a whole new tracking infrastructure when a proven one already exists.
The European Commission and Parliament have done a deal which looks set to introduce a law that makes this kind of tracking a daily part of police work.
The "Data Retention Directive" proposes tracking all mobile phone and Internet usage, and storing this for 2 years, and (worst) making it available to police and other parties (possibly commercial ones), without much regard to existing privacy laws.
There is an FFII press release on this subject: http://wiki.ffii.de/DataRetPr051205En.
The FFII and EDRI are fighting this in the Parliament, but the directive has been shoved through very brutally by the Council, led by the UK. Basically the bureaucrats of the Commission, unhindered by any European Constitution, are creating laws by stealth, and this Big Brother directive is symptomatic of a take over of the national legislative processes by an group of unelected, unaccountable officials.
The UK Presidency had proposed a very brutal law, which went as far as requiring the logging of the MAC address of every computer connected to the Internet (yes, that blew me away too), and using the Good Cop/ Bad Cop approach, bullied the Parliament into accepting a "compromise" agreement that dropped all the references to terrorism, and added a bunch of waffle about human rights, but basically creates a pan-European database of every cellphone call, and every Internet communication. I've not yet had time to see whether TCP/IP end-points are also logged, but the original proposals definitely requested this.
Europe is rapidly turning into a police state that makes the US look like a haven of freedom and civil rights. The rejection of the European Constitution by the French and Dutch voters, though a nicely symbolic act, have left a power vacuum into which the grey bureaucrats of the Commission have stepped.
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A choice I'm willing to take is to have our government protect out freedoms and I'll just take whatever comes from the terrorists. If our freedoms are going to be taken away, what's the point anymore?
There is no 'Patriot' act. There is a USAPATRIOT act. It is a 'Patriot' act about as much as it is a 'U SAP A RIOT' act.
What I'm thinking of here are all of the businesses that make use of cellphone GPS tracking as part of their normal operation. (EG. Most courier services in my area issue drivers Nextel 2-way radio/phones and track their location constantly via the phone's GPS system. The results are dumped into some routing software that dispatch uses to figure out who is closest to a customer calling in to have a delivery picked up.)
Even if legislation is written up that specifically prevents govt. and police from obtaining this type of info from the *cellular companies* without a warrant, would the same apply if they wanted it from a private business?
As people have pointed out, there are good and bad reasons that location information might be used. But it applies to tons of other things too. Say you get a WiFi capable PDA or music player, the same location information is available from those networks. Your WiFi connected laptop is also trackable, as is your pager, and soon, also your new car.
There will be those that learn to foil such tracking attempts, and so, in the end, the only people that can't be tracked are the people that should be.... which again means lots of money spent for little or no value... EXCEPT that Google and others will take advantage of that and offer us services and goods for free if we listen to the location based advertising. Yes, as you drive past the McD's your cell phone will ring with an SMS messsage containing a 15 percent off coupon for a happy meal if you buy in the next 11 minutes.
That is the reason that location tracking will continue to grow... not because of the police.
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Thank you for making that irrelevant point that added no value to this discussion. I'll make a note not to invite you to my next dinner party.
One of the last things keeping us from becoming a police state.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
i have a pay as you go service and i know when i request call logs, they've told me that they don't keep it for pay as you go customers. does anyone know anything about this? I still have the same phone from five years ago so i don't remember the procedure, but when i bought my phone, i bought the phone versus a phone and a plan then i bought some pay as you go vouchers, i don't remember my name being on anything...i could be wrong. I use a well known carrier in canada.
$action = empty(PHP) ? backToC() : unset(PHP) ; "when the concrete cases are understood, the abstractions are readily
People should stop focusing on the _last_ things keeping them from becoming a police state, and start focusing on the _first_ things.
Starting with very dubious electronic voting machines and who you vote as leaders.
Once you get too many of the wrong people in power, they can change all that stuff very quickly. Look at the Patriot Act, and all the recent crappy laws with dangerous long term consequences.
If citizens keep sticking their heads in the sand (or erm troughs of junk food?), the leaders can basically do what they want with impunity.
Even if you don't allow tracking now, Mr Evil Dictator can always turn it back on, once he's in power.
So the main thing is to never allow Mr Evil Dictator a chance to get power in the first place.
It is quite scary and sad that history has proven that many people will actually be willing to listen to some evil person and give him the power. These people will willingly kill anybody - even their relatives or parents/children just because "it's their job" or the supreme leader told them to.
It`s 25 meters for 900MHz and about 10 meters for 1200MHz. And cell phone can be located even when it`s turned off but with working batteries. :) ;)
If cell phones have this cool feature there is no way that someone will not make some use them, hehehe
Two years ago it was possible to do this without assistance of GSM operator with $20.000 worth GSM sniffer / tracker device. Now it is somewhat harded but still posible.
Pre GSM phones where not using any real encryption at all and everyone was happy hehehe
In actual practice now we're in the 21st century, the need for probably cause reasonable suspicion, etc, only apply if the law enforcement personnel in question expect to be able to use the evidence/intelligence they're gathering in court. When they're simply on a fishing expedition, things like warrantless clandestine searches, electronic eavesdropping and other various forms of non-invasive invasions of privacy such as millimeter wave imaging devices, IR thru-the-wall imaging, lasers bounced off window panes to record audio inside buildings, super telephoto lenses from hell, etc., are all routinely used with impunity. Who's going to stop them? Who's going to police the police?
You can already track the location of a cellphone. There are many service providers but the one I use is http://www.fleetonline.net/ You do need one-time physical access to a cellphone you want to track but other than that it's just a matter of paying a small fee per location-request. Accuracy depends on geographical factors but it's generally pretty good.
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GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.
"I don't give a goddamn," Bush retorted. "I'm the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way."
"Mr. President," one aide in the meeting said. "There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution."
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face," Bush screamed back. "It's just a goddamned piece of paper!"
because more people have cellphones then this idea -1 47250&tid=158&tid=215 - and the LEA have to start somewhere NOW before it is too late*.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/06/0
*late for what i don't know
300 yards? I'm one of the guys that sets up and tweaks the E911 Wireless Location System for Cingular & T-Mobile. I can tell you for a fact that once I get the network properly honed, the system will determine the lat/long to within about 300 inches of the 911 caller's handset.
...is using this to track kidnapped people. Unless this technology is being used to protect people directly, it is just a telescreen (from 1984).
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
It's so easy to create alibies these days. Drive your car with a tolltag across some bridge to a shopping center. Leave your cell phone stashed somewhere in shopping center turned to auto answer with volume muted. Take other transpo back, commit your "indescretion", call your cellphone. Go back, pick up car.
Records show "you" in another location "interacting" during the time of the crime.
And that's not being as fancy as you can get if you understand the systems.
The future looks bright!
I'm posting anonymously for obvious reasons.
I would love to be able to track the location of my 15 year old daughter's cell phone. She is bipolar and chemical dependent. We can not keep an eye on her 24 hours a day and occassionally she simply disappears. Yes, we are trying to get her into a residential treatment program, but finding something that deals with her problems (dual diagnosis) and is covered by our insurance is proving difficult. If I had unlimited funds I would place her in the best place possible, but financial realities makes that impossible.
If personal tracking were possible, we would be able to find her during one of her disappearing acts and (hopefully) keep her out of danger. Binge drinking is one of the problems, and in that state she places herself in extreme danger. It's basically a race between us finding a suitable treatment program and her self-destructing.
For a fee of from $65 to $110, depending on the service requrested, they will give you the name and address of who owns a particular cell phone, the cell phone(s) owned by any particular person, or the telephone numbers called from any particular cell phone.
...the rough location of the PHONE the subscriber owns. My phone is usually in my wife's Jeep because I never use it. I'm not though. :)
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Then Jack Bauer would be featuring in "4" instead of "24".
Man, the technobabble in that show annoys me !
-- You can't give it, you can't even buy it, and you just don't get it!
I tried to turn off the tracking features in my phone and a text message popped up:
lol i'm not tracking you
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
In the (non-fiction) book "Killing Pablo" by Mark Bowden, who wrote "Black Hawk Down" he says that the military/DEA were aerially tracking the Escobar cartel's cell phones to find (and kill) his associates and eventually him.
The interesting part was, it didn't matter if the phone was on; as long as it had a live battery in it, the device could be *silently* turned on and tracked.
Does anyone know more about this?
For example, a girl in my halls, she was standing outside talking on her phone, three guys came along, hit her in the face, stole the phone. The police turned up literally 5 mins after we called them. They said they could drive around and see if they could see them. We called her phone number and they answered it. If the police could have made a call, found out their general position in a few seconds (not waiting for a warrant), then they could have been caught.
Same as if I was ever kidnapped (I often keep my phone down my bra as well), they could have information on where I was taken, looked at cctv/speed cameras at the certain time where my phone was, to find out what a vehicle or suspect looked like, etc.
If I was accused of a crime it would also be a pretty good (If I could prove I had the phone on me) alibi.
At least I'd feel safer knowing that the police (etc) knew where I (my phone) was. Screw it, just implant a phone in my head.
Maybe it's cus I'm a girl but I'd choose safety over privacy. If you're dead then privacy ain't going to matter too much.
Even if legislation is written up that specifically prevents govt. and police from obtaining this type of info from the *cellular companies* without a warrant, would the same apply if they wanted it from a private business?
While somewhat of a grey area, yes, they can. That's an important point. The police are always free to ASK nicely for any information they want as long as the person they ask doesn't have to commit a crime in order to answer them. They are even free to ask the suspect (and there are a heap of "dumb criminal" stories where they did and the idiot TOLD them what they wanted to know).
So, in this case, they could always just ask the courrier service for the info, and would probably get it. Meanwhile, the courrier service has every right to the info since they are the cell company's customer, not the driver.
The key difference in court orders is that they compel compliance. In the case of phone companies, the primary reason compulsion is necessary is that they have to devote resources (read costs) to answering. Certainly it is not due to any sort of respect for their customer's privacy! (though they'll spin it that way because "We respect our customer's privacy" sounds so much better than "We're a bunch of cheap bastards")
What they do know is where the phone is, which indeed can be very different as we all know.