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Cops' Warrantless Cell Phone Tracking Now Better Than GPS
Sparrowvsrevolution writes "On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing to discuss a proposed bill to limit location tracking of electronic devices without a warrant — what it's calling the Geolocational Privacy and Surveillance Act, or the GPS Act. Ahead of that hearing, University of Pennsylvania computer science professor Matt Blaze submitted written testimony (PDF) telling Congress that phone carriers, as well as the law enforcement agencies with which they share data, can now use phones' proximity to cell towers and other sources of cellular data to track their location as precisely or even more precisely than they can with global positioning satellites. Thanks to the growing density of cell towers and the proliferation of devices like picocells and femtocells that transmit cell signals indoors, even GPS-less phones can be tracked with a high degree of precision and can offer data that GPS can't, like the location of someone inside a building or what floor they're on. With the GPS Act, Congress is considering expanding the ban on warrantless tracking of cars with GPS devices that the Supreme Court decided on in January. Blaze's testimony suggests they need to include non-GPS tracking of cell phones in that ban, a measure law enforcement agencies are strongly resisting."
The cell tower nearest my home is about 2 miles by crow, but 15 miles by car, on the other side of the reservoir. GPS is much more accurate.
Don't they use your distance from multiple cell towers to triangulate your position?
We, the consumers, pay good money for the hardware in a smartphone, including the GPS geolocation capabilities. Then some government goons come along and say "Ha ha! We'll track your location using the GPS electronics in your phone!" ------- Same with Facebook. We, the users, make Facebook a great, big site with our data and our invested time. Then the government goons come along and say "Ha Ha! We'll find out everything we want about you by poaching your Facebook data!" ------ This particular decade has very much started on the wrong foot, with regards to personal privacy and somesuch. -------- How much worse can this all get? Will we be required by law to give up ALL PRIVATE DATA because the government likes to have it? -------- These laws and personal data tracking policies are just wrong.... wrong, wrong, wrong....
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Every time we pass a new law we water down the constitution.
"papers" - is not strictly paper. it is where their data is stored.
"effects" - whatever they have
"houses" - where they store themselves and their stuff.
"persons" - they themselves
what more is needed?
comment directly in my journal
Unlike GPS devices covertly installed on your vehicle by police, cell phones are in the user's control. You don't have to leave it turned on all the time. In particular, if you are doing something private, like visiting your mistress, you can simply turn the phone off before driving to her apartment. And if you're afraid the phone will still leak location information while in standby or power-off mode, you can simply remove the battery.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
This seems obvious to me, but bills like this should be formulated in terms of what they actually do, regardless of the technology used.
In this case, the bill should simply state that a warrant is required when someones location is actively monitored within a certain precision for a certain time period.
Same with laws around cookies, which is a topic among lawmakers in some countries. Instead targeting cookies, these laws should address the fact that a user is uniquely identified across sessions and/or websites. Cookies are just one way to achieve this, but there are others which do not even require cookies, such IP number in combination with all sorts of data such as browser agent, os, screen resolution etc. etc. that makes any user pretty much unique even without cookies.
My karma ran over your dogma
Correct. The police should be more constrained in their actions than the average citizen. Unfortunately we've allowed things to get turned on their heads.
With respect, bullshit
What you meant was, "Privacy or Mass Surveillance.... You can't have both".
Privacy in the long run will always benefit the People more than governments use of mass surveillance to allegedly provide the People with more security. The common mistake is treating the government like a regular person and evaluating their possession of information as having the same possible consequences which completely ignores the massive differences in power between both actors.
Simple surveillance, under Due Process, is not affected by creating laws to protect Privacy, or laws that ban the use of mass surveillance on people.
Law enforcement and governments will always have enough resources and technology to intercept communications and watch a single person. It is the traditional stake out, using listening devices, gathering information the old fashioned way, etc. They might not be able to do this to millions of people at one time, but that is the point. It is dangerous to allow them to do that.
Convince me that more than 10% of the population is currently engaged in conspiracies to commit heinous and violent acts against other citizens (forget that bullshit about the War on Drugs) and it *might* be a point for discussion.
The greatest danger we face is the government . That's not paranoia either, but simple observation of the facts and history.
Some of the justices in the GPS case mostly objected to the fact that a physical device was attached to the suspects vehicle. If the tracking was entirely unintrusive as with tracking a cell phone it may have had a different outcome.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
do you really think law enforcement would ever be expected to wait to get a warrant before rescuing a kidnap victim?
Only if they want to convict the kidnapper. Using warrants and following the law are sort of important when it comes to convicting someone of a crime.
WTB [sig], PST!!!