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Newest Gov't Tracking Threat: Cell-Site Data Without a Warrant
An anonymous reader writes "Earlier this year, the Supreme Court put an end to warrantless GPS tracking. Now, federal prosecutors are trying to get similar data from a different source. A U.S. District Judge has ruled that getting locational data from cell towers in order to track suspects is just fine. '[Judge Huvelle] sidestepped the Fourth Amendment argument and declined to analyze whether the Supreme Court's ruling in Jones' case has any bearing on whether cell-site data can be used without a warrant. Instead, she focused on a doctrine called the "good-faith exemption," in which evidence is not suppressed if the authorities were following the law at the time. The data in Jones' case was coughed up in 2005, well before the Supreme Court's ruling on GPS. "The court, however, need not resolve this vexing question of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, since it concludes that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies," (.PDF) she wrote. ... With that, prosecutors are legally in the clear to use Jones’ phone location records without a warrant.'"
And therefor her ruling is irrelevant to cases in which the tower data was acquired since the Supreme Court GPS ruling.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
No, the moral of the story is that if you think you are covered by the 4th amendment, and that you're not living in a surveillance society ... you're wrong.
Your government will spy on you without a warrant, whenever they like.
This is all of the stuff we used to joke about "papers please" where only the evil communist bastards would do such a thing. Only now, it's accepted as perfectly normal and legal.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule: means that as long as the police thought that they had a valid warrant, their behavior is acceptable and that such illegally obtained evidence may be presented rather than excluded. But the point of the exclusionary rule is to stop police/prosecutor misconduct by not rewarding inappropriate behavior. A good faith exception means you can be sneaky and side-step the law by having a detective obtain a search warrant in bad faith (by providing or proclaming certain facts which are known to be untrue) and then by having separate police officers "act in good faith" by carrying out that warrant. :>) ]
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Why is it that for civilians/non-law-officers the concept is "ignorance of the law is no excuse"? Police instead get the "well as long as you intended/meant to do good, it's alright..." Regular people are held to the letter of the law even if they are not aware of the existence of the law. Why should police/detectives/prosecutors be rewarded for gaming the system or for an illegal search warrant? [warning, IANAL and this post strongly follows the story line of something from Law and Order about one or two years ago...