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DOJ: We Don't Need a Warrant To Track You
GovTechGuy writes "The Department of Justice maintains it does not need a warrant to track an individual using location data captured from their cellphone. 'Cellphone location records are currently lumped under Title 1 and Title 2 of the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (PL 99-508), which cover stored communications and call details. Accessing those types of information typically requires only a court order, rather than a warrant, as is required for the contents of a phone call or digital message under Title 3.' That has prompted Maine and Montana to pass laws banning warrantless cellphone tracking; unfortunately, Congress doesn't appear close to doing the same."
Ones that say that yes they do need a warrant. Meh, who am I kidding these days...
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
If they do not want to obey the laws, then neither shall I.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Turnabout would be to publish a Web service showing the real-time locations of all DOJ employees' cell phones. After all, according to them, that information is not private.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
A warrant is a court order, yes, but a court order is not necessarily a warrant. Warrants generally have a lot stricter rules on when and how they are issued. Specifically, a search warrant requires probable cause. A court order does not.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
I wonder how the government would feel if someone were to put up a website that gives real-time information about the location of members of congress, based on cell-phone data? Surely that wouldn't make them feel a bit uneasy, even if there were no publicly-ill intentions, right?
I'm so glad we have a two party system where one party is so very obviously good and virtuous and the other is evil for all to see. We should keep voting blindly along party lines based on the rhetoric these people speak rather than looking at their actions.
I must excuse myself, the Two Minute Hate is about to begin.
No, according to them, that information isn't private enough to require a warrant. It still requires a court order to obtain, and it's not considered public information.
If you're going to respond to a bad situation, you have to actually understand the real situation, or you're just going to get dismissed as ignorant.
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
vote for the first presidential candidate who promises to rock your world
*crickets*...*crickets*...
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
I'm not sure it is possible anymore. Those fucks just obtained right to jail citizens for indefinite time without court order (NDAA injunction has been struck down by Obama's cronies in 13 circuit, and good lock with SCOTUS). US of A 2013 reminds me Germany 1936. Scary times ahead...
it's useful for finding missing people and for solving murders/manslaughters(vehicular).
of course, then they would have warrant for that. note that it never seems to be used on any reality cop shows from usa for that... but that's what the info is usually used for.
though, it's always surprising that they still manage to have a major gang and narcotics dealing problems even if they could according to their own reading of the law datamine the shit out of the networks - and yes it would get you hotspots, it would give you regions(block level) where crackheads go buy their crack from and who brings in the shipments from where. having separate phones doesn't help, you would need to never keep them on at same time and their buyers sure don't do the two phone never on in the same cell dance, nobody does. all the surveillance and for shit all nothing except special cases when they feel like it.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Thanks for trolling. They can (and do) track you based on triangulation to cell towers. GPS is not needed.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
Wrong. A President instituted the NSA on his own. A President could abolish the NSA on his own.
Yeah, like that candidate:
A) Exists
B) Would even try to carry through on his promises
C) Would be able to get corrupt congress-critters to actually pass anything that helps the problem
D) Would make it on the ballot without being blasted by "Insane, crime-loving commie" propaganda from the big two parties...
Dear DOJ:
And WE don't need a warrant to vote for the first presidential candidate who promises to rock your world and make sure your out of control ass gets curbed, and to prosecute everyone who failed to honor their pledge to UPHOLD THE CONSTITUTION. In fact maybe the NSA doesn't even need to exist. We won WW2 without you.
Sincerely,
voting citizens who have a clue and a care
Tried it, didn't work - remember "Hope and Change?" Hell, not only did dude fail to uphold his campaign promises, the motherfucker doubled-down on anti-Constitutional activities!
Don't feel bad, I voted for the bastard once myself.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Since governments in general disregard laws with impunity, what difference can it possibly make to pass laws requiring warrants? They will do what they are going to do anyway. The existence of a law will not change this behaviour. The powerful are not constrained by laws, only the weak.
Yeah, so let's not even try? Tyranny couldn't exist without attitudes like that, backed up by resignation.
You are looking at it ass-backwards. Find an honest man with core principles who recognizes the NSA should be abolished, and is otherwise well qualified to be President, and help see him through to nomination and election. If you need a third party, add that to the list of things to do.
Nothing worth doing is easy.
http://rt.com/usa/aclu-license-plate-surveillance-216/
Each tower only can report that it "saw" your phone at a particular time and with whatever signal strength. If a tower is saturated, it doesn't have anything. If there are only one or two towers that "see" your phone, they can't accurately triangulate (triangulation needs three fixes). Signal strength can vary a lot depending on intervening ground and other obstacles so two towers ony define an area where you might be (or might have been). Finally, your phone data is mixed in with the gigabytes of data from all of the other phone users whose phones connected to a particular tower and your data has to be extracted and this has to be done for ANY cell tower that might have connected to your phone.
So that's as easy and accurate as tapping into "my location is lat xyz, lon abc, elevation nnn"?
Your phone figuring out where it is is a whole different problem from someone who doesn't know where you are trying to find you or track your movements based on which cell towers your phone "sees." Finally, just like with GPS, don't turn on an app that does something like report your location. Typically, the phone won't perform geolocation unless there is something for it to do with the location data. The phone software only wants a cell tower to talk to. If there is more than one, so much the better but that's all the phone needs to operate as a phone.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I don't know about you, but I didn't vote for the FISA court, or for the jackoffs on the Supreme Court, or for the head of the NSA or for any of the thousands of congressional staffers who are actually doing the legislating. Nor did I vote for the lobbyists who write the bills, or for ALEC or for the biggest PACs.
You could blame "the American People" if the elected officials were actually doing any governing. Unfortunately, we have outsourced everything to a bunch of people whose names we do not know and who are not accountable to anyone. That's why it sometimes seems so strange, how the legislative process often suddenly takes such unexpected turns, with last-minute changes and secrecy and obfuscation. I don't know too much about what it was like before the 1950's, but I know for sure that at least since 1980, the people we think of as our elected officials are not the ones running the government.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The rules are fairly simple in that whoever gets the most votes wins. If enough people really didn't like the "main two candidates" (which by all appearances, generally seems to generally be the case already), and weren't so deathly afraid of what everybody else was going to vote like to risk voting for somebody they might have had more in common with, but think that they don't have a chance of winning (this one's a harder problem to tackle), that the nationwide cumulative effect of enough people of people voting for who they actually *want* could could very well lead to an independent could actually become president (albeit probably still with a minority share of the total votes).
But of course, it will never happen... because most voters spend far too much worrying about trying to cancel out votes for somebody they really *don't* want in... which is thinking more about how other people vote than how one really wants to vote themselves... and ultimately extremely silly way to exercise a right that as directly as possible puts citizens in charge of who will form their next government.
The only advantage this style of voting has that I can see is that it doesn't take much effort... plus, one doesn't overly have to worry about feeling accountable for how things turn out afterwards if the person they vote for gets in and happens to start implementing undesirable policies, since such a vote is not really a consequence of a persons' own freely made choice, but instead more of a reactionary consequence to some outside influence that they perceived as a greater and more immediate threat. How can one really be held personally responsible for making what may turn out to a bad choice when at the time, the choice was only made in what seemed to be self-defense?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Those words don't mean what you think they mean. Which has caused you to completely misinterpret what the intention was.
Militia did not mean "national guard" or "army." It meant an armed citizen (male, typically) capable of fighting. You can be sure of this because there was no army or guard at the time. You can also be sure of it because that was how it was defined in law at the time.
The intent of the 4th is, in fact, to ensure that the citizens are armed.
While we're at it, "well regulated" didn't mean "lots of laws", it meant "consistently armed and prepared. So much shot, musket, powder, etc." Regulation was used in the sense that a clock is well regulated, consistent, dependable (in fact, a brand of clock at the time was "Regulator.")
Take a look at the Militia Acts of 1792 in order to shed a little light on what these terms actually mean.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.