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New Jersey Supreme Court Restricts Police Searches of Phone Data
An anonymous reader sends this quote from the NY Times:
"Staking out new ground in the noisy debate about technology and privacy in law enforcement, the New Jersey Supreme Court on Thursday ordered that the police will now have to get a search warrant before obtaining tracking information from cellphone providers. The ruling (PDF) puts the state at the forefront of efforts to define the boundaries around a law enforcement practice that a national survey last year showed was routine, and typically done without court oversight or public awareness. With lower courts divided on the use of cellphone tracking data, legal experts say, the issue is likely to end up before the United States Supreme Court. The New Jersey decision also underscores the extent of the battles over government intrusion into personal data in a quickly advancing digital age, from small town police departments to the National Security Agency's surveillance of e-mail and cellphone conversations."
You pull out an NSA. We pull out a Supreme Court ruling. THAT's the New Jersey way. You gotta problem with that buddy?
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
You mean law enforcement has to follow the law? That's terrible news!
sudo make me a sandwich
There has to obviously be an exception to the rule to allow for exigent circumstances, like when someone is kidnapped or they are trying to locate an active shooter.
well.. that's the same as not needing a warrant for entering a house a shooter is shooting from I suppose. you're already going to arrest the guy in those cases too, regardless of what the tracking will tell you.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
There has to obviously be an exception to the rule to allow for exigent circumstances, like when someone is kidnapped or they are trying to locate an active shooter.
Definitely - this comes down to probable cause.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probable_cause
It should be very specific and justified, which is something that needs to be permissible. What needs to go away are the fishing expeditions and general riffling through personal data for persons where there is no probable cause. Probable cause shouldn't even require a warrant if there's an immediate threat. However it should only apply when there are criminal charges in mind, and a suspect. i.e. tracking a kidnap victims cellphone is demonstrably different to pulling phone location for people without reasonable grounds to consider criminal charges against these particular people.
Privacy expectations aside, it's not too difficult to build up a solid list of criteria under which it would be reasonable to pry. For one, firemen don't get charged with breaking and entering when they kick down a door to search a burning house. It's quite clear though that this doesn't mean fireman can go kick down the door of any given house without reason to suspect a fire or similar emergency within their remit.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
A buddy of mine has had a couple of occasions to see his criminal record. At the time, he was concerned because he had some "youthful indiscretions" that the judge ordered were to be expunged when he became an adult, and if they had come to light they probably would not have improved the situation he was in at the time.
Apparently, expunging meant taking his manila folder and sealing it shut with actual red tape that had the word "EXPUNGED" printed on it.
"Young man, this will go down on your permanent record!" - truer words were never spoken.
John
There has to obviously be an exception to the rule to allow for exigent circumstances
No, there doesn't. Just because my "papers" are now "on a cellphone", that doesn't mean we throw out all the rules regarding literal papers stored in a briefcase, and introduce a whole new set of less stringent rules that grant the government far more access than they had with literal papers stored in a briefcase.
I really, really hope you did not mean that the way I interpreted it.
Even a blind pig can find an acorn once in a while.
Carter was on this road, he's just jealous.
No brain, no pain.
If you are a LEO and you have a judge that more or less likes you you could call said judge up AT HOME and say " sorry to bother you Sir but i have Bob coming over with a warrant you need to sign...."
with a decent E-Warrant system you wouldn't even need to have Bob go over for the sig.
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Exigent circumstances do not eliminate the need for probable cause. They only save you time standing in front of a judge. If there is no probable cause, anything you found during your search is inadmissible in court.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If this goes to the Supreme Court, I can't see this doing anything other than establishing that the police have the power to request this data without a warrant at will. Smith v. Maryland (1979) established that police do not need a warrant for pen register data (the record of who you were calling and when), because there is no reasonable expectation of privacy when you voluntarily transmit that data to a third party (the phone company). Note that this is different from the *content* of your calls -- wiretaps still require warrants, but certain metadata is free game.
Since your cell phones are effectively transmitting their location at all times over the public airwaves, I wouldn't be surprised at all if the Supreme Court will rule that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy in that data.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
That must depend on the jurisdiction or something. In Baltimore, "expunging" means you walk out of the building with the records in a manilla folder and do whatever you want with them. Of course, who can say what other copies exist?