Justices Ponder Need For Warrant For Cellphone Tower Data (apnews.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Like almost everyone else in America, thieves tend to carry their cellphones with them to work. When they use their phones on the job, police find it easier to do their jobs. They can get cellphone tower records that help place suspects in the vicinity of crimes, and they do so thousands of times a year. Activists across the political spectrum, media organizations and technology experts are among those arguing that it is altogether too easy for authorities to learn revealing details of Americans' lives merely by examining records kept by Verizon, T-Mobile and other cellphone service companies. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court hears its latest case about privacy in the digital age. At issue is whether police generally need a warrant to review the records. Justices on the left and right have recognized that technology has altered privacy concerns. The court will hear arguments in an appeal by federal prison inmate Timothy Carpenter. He is serving a 116-year sentence after a jury convicted him of armed robberies in the Detroit area and northwestern Ohio.

Comments

"in the vicinity"

[PopeRatzo]

They can get cellphone tower records that help place suspects in the vicinity of crimes

I've been in the vicinity of a strip club in Rantoul, Illinois, but that doesn't mean I was getting a lap dance from a one-armed stripper.

Well, I was getting a lapdance from a one-armed stripper, but the fact that I was in the vicinity doesn't prove anything.

If police want information from a goddamn phone, they need to get a goddamned warrant.

Re:"in the vicinity"

[Anonymous Coward]

Warrant to search your property yes I agree. Warrant to search phone company records for triangulation data not so cut n' dry. I would take the side they don't need a warrant for the cell tower triangulation data if the phone company is willing to part with it.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Anonymous Coward]

They are not getting information from a phone. They are getting information about a phone. It's like if they see you carring a sealed briefcase. They are allowed to see the briefcase, and deduce what they can. They are not allowed to compel you tonopen it without a warrant, or probable cause that will stand up in court. If you do not want to be traced, stop carrying an electronic beacon..

Re:"in the vicinity"

[Anonymous Coward]

This has to do with information not from the phone, but from the operator's systems. Law enforcement already requires warrants/orders to force you to turn over your phone (and phone password).

Re:"in the vicinity"

[Anonymous Coward]

Warrant to search your property yes I agree. Warrant to search phone company records for triangulation data not so cut n' dry. I would take the side they don't need a warrant for the cell tower triangulation data if the phone company is willing to part with it.

You are dismissing the REAL issue. While they scour for one particular person accused of a crime, they "accidentally" capture 10,000 records of innocent people. And phone companies are often subsidized by government, which means they are always willing to part with it, no matter how legally irrelevant.

This is the root problem with ISMI catchers, which undoubtedly is the tool used for this kind of surveillance.

Fucking kills me that people fail to understand the big picture.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[PopeRatzo]

If you do not want to be traced, stop carrying an electronic beacon..

So basically, what you're saying is, "If you don't want your phone calls eavesdropped, you should not use a device that broadcasts them over radio frequency."

If police should need a warrant to listen in on phone calls, they should need a warrant for location information as well. Remember, this location information is between you and the phone company.

And why is it such a horrible burden for law enforcement to obtain a warrant in the first place? Is it because they're afraid a judge will look at their lack of evidence and say "no"?

Re:"in the vicinity"

[magarity]

Well, I was getting a lapdance from a one-armed stripper

Alas, if only the deciding case was a serial lapdance recipient instead of a serial armed robber.

Re:"in the vicinity"

[Anonymous Coward]

"I've been in the vicinity of a strip club in Rantoul, Illinois, but that doesn't mean I was getting a lap dance from a one-armed stripper."

Actually, it does. By the rules of construction, all police need to do is establish your whereabouts and offer a reasonable timeline during which you could have constructively participated in the alleged activity, and that is acceptable by the courts as a meaningful circumstantial case. It is altogether easy to obtain a conviction on a purely circumstantial case.

For example, let's say you bought bread at one store, cheese at another, and ham at yet another. You could be easily convicted of stealing a jar of mayo that went missing from any one of the stores in the temporal vicinity of your purchases, even if there is no physical evidence to prove it beyond reasonable doubt. The lesson is to always buy mayo if you're buying other ham and cheese sandwich stuff.

Re:"in the vicinity"

[MightyYar]

And phone companies are often subsidized by government,

Not just subsidized - all of them receive their corporate charter from government. In telecommunications, they rely on government-created and enforced rights on parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Verizon is just as much beholden to the US government as the East India Company was to the UK - I don't think you can really separate them.

Re:"in the vicinity"

[CodeHog]

Rantoul, you'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy in Illinois. (except maybe Springfield).

Re:"in the vicinity"

[ShanghaiBill]

I've been in the vicinity of a strip club in Rantoul, Illinois

Let's say there was stripper murdered behind the strip club. So the police check the phone data, and 1000 people were in the vicinity. Then a few days later there is another murder behind another strip club, and another 1000 people were in the vicinity at the time of the murder ... but there is this one guy that was at both places. The police might want to talk to that guy.

Requiring the police to get a warrant may slow this process down by several minutes.

If police want information from a goddamn phone, they need to get a goddamned warrant.

This isn't about getting information from a phone. It is about getting information collected by a cell tower. They want info from the phone company, not from you.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Anonymous Coward]

If you do not want to be traced, stop carrying an electronic beacon..

So basically, what you're saying is, "If you don't want your phone calls eavesdropped, you should not use a device that broadcasts them over radio frequency."

If police should need a warrant to listen in on phone calls, they should need a warrant for location information as well. Remember, this location information is between you and the phone company.

And why is it such a horrible burden for law enforcement to obtain a warrant in the first place? Is it because they're afraid a judge will look at their lack of evidence and say "no"?

Which is why the police don't need a warrant - you ALREADY AGREED TO SHARE THAT INFORMATION.

Why do you find that hard to understand?

Re:"in the vicinity"

[ShanghaiBill]

And phone companies are often subsidized by government, which means they are always willing to part with it, no matter how legally irrelevant.

Many phone companies have a written policy of releasing customer data only when legally compelled to do so.

Re:"in the vicinity"

[ShanghaiBill]

I would take the side they don't need a warrant for the cell tower triangulation data if the phone company is willing to part with it.

If no warrant is required, then how is the phone company supposed to know it is a legitimate crime investigation, and not some cop trying to track down the guy dating his ex-girlfriend?

Many people assume that getting a warrant is an undue burden. Most jurisdictions have judges available or on-call 24/7, and a judge can review and issue a warrant in a few minutes if it is clearly justified.

Re:"in the vicinity"

[blindseer]

The lesson is to always buy mayo if you're buying other ham and cheese sandwich stuff.

But I never put mayo on my ham and cheese sandwiches. I'll put on onions and mustard but never mayonnaise. If I buy a sandwich, and it happens to have mayonnaise on it, I'll eat it happily but I don't put it on myself. To me mayonnaise is for french fries and tater tots. I don't even have ketchup in my house, except maybe some packets I save from when I grab a burger and the person packing the bag tosses in ketchup without asking. If someone stops by to eat and they want ketchup then I offer those packets.

This "but everyone does this" argument can be shown to fail in specific cases. I recall a case of constructive possession of a gun where the argument was that a passenger in a car could obviously see the gun behind the driver's seat. In court the defense raised this point and then the accused removed his false eye. For him to see the gun would have required an impossible contortion. The case was dropped.

While we're talking about strip clubs I'll mention a hardware store I visited once that had a strip club across the street. They did good business from people going to the hardware store to buy something, anything, to "prove" that their presence near the strip club was legitimate to anyone that might ask. You can claim I was at the strip club getting a lap dance, because my phone was in the vicinity, but I have a receipt for a set of wrenches that I bought that day showing I was just chatting it up with the nice young man behind the counter for an hour or two.

Re:"in the vicinity"

[CrimsonAvenger]

they rely on government-created and enforced rights on parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.

You misspelled "privileges"....

Re:"in the vicinity"

[Anonymous Coward]

When detectives look for clues to a crime they've knocked on my door asking for questions even though I was completey innocent.

Re:"in the vicinity"

[Anonymous Coward]

They still should need the warrant.

The important part of the warrant process is that the cops have to state ahead of time what they are looking for, and why they think they will find it, before they do the search. This is to prevent them from shaking down citizens on a whim and adds accountability to their use of police authority.

That should not go away just because the cops think they've found a technicality that lets them get around due process when they want to as that is not the purpose of the law guaranteeing due process.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Anonymous Coward]

share it with the fucking phone company not the fucking pigs, you goddamn slave!

Re:"in the vicinity"

[Anonymous Coward]

Police states don't provide security so much as curtail liberty.

In order to avoid becoming (more of a) police state, we must enforce due process and public accountability.

It's the only way.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Anonymous Coward]

What they're doing here is like claiming that because they placed their wire tap on the phone companies switchboard with the phone company's permission they can listen in on any calls routed through that switchboard.

And for the same reason they need a warrant specifying which lines they will listen to and when, they should in this case need a warrant specifying what records they intend to read.

Re:"in the vicinity"

[networkBoy]

Of course then they interview the store staff that was on the schedule for the date/time of your receipt and/or the time your cellphone was in the area.

Pragmatically if you're going to do something illegal leave the phone at home*, if you need a phone use a burner that was not activated at your home, is always turned on and off in the location of a mall, or other high population area**.

Now, this takes discipline, something most bad guys lack in spades... so no worries.
The bad guys with the proper skills and discipline are never caught.

*
There is also the alternative of sending a buddy to take your phone to a movie with him/her. They must buy two tickets, etc. but this adds a trust risk. If they are on the take / benefiting from the crime and their job is to be the alibi then so be it, but the whole thing about two people, secrets, and death applies.
**
the risk of being at the same place each on/off is mitigated by high population, and randomly turning it on/off when away from your house introduces a possible circle to search inside of.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Obfuscant]

So basically, what you're saying is, "If you don't want your phone calls eavesdropped, you should not use a device that broadcasts them over radio frequency."

That would be what I say. It's pretty obvious. If you want to keep a secret, don't transmit it via the public airwaves in a way that anyone who wants to can listen in. I think that's a pretty common sense attitude to have. Unfortunately, we have precedent from morons who thought their analog cell calls were guaranteed to be private despite being able to be received by UHF TV sets. That led to 47USC302 that mandates frequency blocks on radios over parts of the cell bands.

People who transmit their voice using radio should be educated that they are doing that, not coddled into thinking there is some magic that turns the insecure medium they are using into a secure one. And people who carry devices that they know can be used to track them whereever they go should learn to live with the natural result of their decision, not have artificial legal protections put in place to allow them their convenience while avoiding the results of their decisions.

If police should need a warrant to listen in on phone calls, they should need a warrant for location information as well.

Why? A conversation includes two people, one of which did not knowingly decide to participate using an insecure channel. The phone's location is not provided by the phone, it is a record kept by the artificial "person" known as "cell phone company". If a company is not a person, then it has no constitutional right to privacy, and no fourth amendment protections.

Remember, this location information is between you and the phone company.

You cannot "remember" something which has never been a fact. The location information is used and created by the phone company; you didn't give it to them. It wasn't "between you", it wasn't some shared secret. It's data they created.

And why is it such a horrible burden for law enforcement to obtain a warrant in the first place?

Sometimes there are time constraints that make it impractical. For example, there's a lost dementia patient who is carrying a cell phone. Where is he? The cell company can tell us. Why shouldn't it? The lost person can do a lot of damage to himself in the time it takes to get a warrant.

Is it because they're afraid a judge will look at their lack of evidence and say "no"?

So you really admit that any warrant requirement would be a rubber stamp hoop to jump through. Why create such things if you know they are going to be meaningless?

Re:"in the vicinity"

[Anonymous Coward]

Many people assume that getting a warrant is an undue burden.

It's only a burden for lazy asshole police officers who think things like Constitutional protections are inconvenient. Probable cause and unreasonable search and seizure is cumbersome, and the police neither know nor care what the law is nor why it's there.

There is an entire class of these things where they say "it would be illegal for us to obtain this, but since these people already have it we can just do a fishing expedition which normally a judge would tell us to go fuck ourselves".

All of this "metadata" shit is really just an end run around the Constitution, because it's really data they'd otherwise have to clear legal thresholds to obtain legally.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Cyberax]

You can get a warrant for a wandering dementia patient. Look up the Silver Alert.

Re:"in the vicinity"

[PPH]

they "accidentally" capture 10,000 records

So they charge one person with a major crime and 9,999 with aggravated mopery with intent to gawk.

Re:"in the vicinity"

[Anonymous Coward]

Requiring the police to get a warrant may slow this process down by several minutes.

Yes, minutes, on an investigation that has already (by your hypothetical) taken days. It would take minutes to get to the scene of the crime, and a judge can evaluate the data request while the officers are on their way. Many police vehicles have printers built in, so they can even print a nice copy of the signed warrant while they drive to the common suspect's current location.

Having another party involved for a couple minutes is not an undue burden with the abundance of communication options currently available.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[nehumanuscrede]

" This isn't about getting information from a phone. It is about getting information collected by a cell tower. They want info from the phone company, not from you. "

Have to respectfully disagree with you on this one.

Curious if your logic works the same way if we change the mechanism a bit.

Do you think the police need a warrant to peruse through your credit card statements at will or perhaps take a look at your bank accounts whenever they feel the need to ?

Online habits perhaps ?

After all, they want info from the Bank, Credit Card issuer or your ISP, not from you.

The bottom line is this: If you want identifying or detailed information of any kind on an individual, then a warrant shoud be required. Regardless of where the information is stored, it still pertains to an individual.

Re:"in the vicinity"

[b0s0z0ku]

Even if it were an undue burden, so what?

I'd rather a few guilty parties go free than police have unfettered right to violate people's privacy. Making police dot all the i's and cross the t's reminds them that they're EMPLOYEES of the public, nothing more. Humble, restrained cops are a good thing.

Re:"in the vicinity"

[gnick]

Many phone companies have a written policy of releasing customer data only when legally compelled to do so.

I believe the issue is how they behave when they get a request that isn't necessarily 'legally compelling'. I have a personal policy of turning over anything that I'm legally compelled to turn over, but that doesn't mean that I blindly comply with every request just because it comes from a government representative.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Obfuscant]

You can get a warrant for a wandering dementia patient. Look up the Silver Alert.

I know what you can do. I know how cellphone forensics works. I deal with SAR. Most companies won't require a warrant, though, just a signed statement from an official party.

What can be done is irrelevant to the point. The point is, time matters for some situations, and being forced to get what shouldn't be necessary is a waste of time that endangers a life.

Re:"in the vicinity"

[tquasar]

I worked about two miles from the USA-Mexico border and my phone would connect to a tower near Tijuana when I made a call. I called my sons a few times but stopped when my bill showed big charges for "International Roaming". So, could it be inferred that I was in Mexico when a crime was committed or I should have been at work?

Re:"in the vicinity"

[_Sharp'r_]

I happened to recently read a couple of insightful articles by law professors about this specific case.

The first article made the very good point that a positive law rule covers a lot of this. In other words, if a regular private citizen couldn't normally get the information, then the Police should need a warrant to get it.

The second writer says he disagrees, but mostly makes the point that just using that standard isn't enough, because sometimes there are other factors which would go into a "reasonable expectation of privacy".

Personally, I'm hoping for a bright-line test for the police to come out of this case which lets everyone know that the police can't go through data people normally don't have access to. I'm not holding by breath, though.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Anonymous Coward]

So basically, what you're saying is, "If you don't want your phone calls eavesdropped, you should not use a device that broadcasts them over radio frequency."

That does happen to be good advice. Do you think it's not? (But we were talking about the connections cellphones make to the networks, not the calls. Totally different thing.)

Remember, this location information is between you and the phone company.

That is exactly what is so unclear. The "location information" isn't something you're sending; it's inferred from who all heard your phone broadcasting, and where they were. You always know that there is a reasonable chance that you're broadcasting to parties other than the phone company, and you don't ever take any measures to prevent that.

The analogy is that your phone is like a town cryer, walking around in public shouting "hi everyone! Got any news for me?" over and over. Nobody needs a warrant to hear you shouting that, or to understand what you're saying, or to remember that it happened. That's pretty different from phone calls.

I think I see both sides of this. One point of view is looking at how people think of cellphones, and we want a legal fiction that matches up with how we wish cellphones worked. The other point of view is looking at how cellphones actually work (broadcasting radio sugnals, which is very different than sending a signal over something as limited as a wire) and not wanting to make up legal fiction that so drastically mismatches the actual reality.

The fact of the matter is that cellphones are less private than oldschool phones, and all the users know this and understand this before they get one. Or if they don't understand it, they pretend to understand it. And they ought to have understood it. Broadcasting isn't something you should be doing when you're trying to maintain privacy.

And if you're not trying to maintain privacy, then you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. That's why you pull down the windowshade before you masterbate, instead of leaving them open, or going out and doing it on the front lawn.

Unless you're into that sort of thing.

And why is it such a horrible burden for law enforcement to obtain a warrant in the first place? Is it because they're afraid a judge will look at their lack of evidence and say "no"?

Yes, probably. But also, if someone is doing something in public, then I think cops are often relieved that they can do things faster and easier, without using any special "cop powers," just like how your neighbor can.

Re:"in the vicinity"

[iamgnat]

Warrant to search phone company records for triangulation data not so cut n' dry.

They are required to get a warrant to do something like attaching a GPS tracker to your car. I fail to see the difference between that and scraping nearly-as-good-as-GPS location information from a 3rd party which would bring the need for a warrant into question.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so corrupt govt official wants to see where you've been, or wants to see who has visited some location recently. Pick a minor crime or a criminal, or get a crony to just do some vandalism or rob an old woman of her purse, get a warrant, and ask for all the records. Now you have ALL the records, and can still do bad things with everyone's supposedly protected whereabouts. Deny that you ever abused the system.

We live in a world of surveillance now. If you want your location to be hidden, turn off your phone, and wear the tinfoil hat just in case they got you with an implant while you were in the hospital for that "inoculation" against the extremely dangerous disease that seemed to just come out of nowhere and had the CDC in a "panic".

Re:"in the vicinity"

[shentino]

Indeed. And getting a warrant requires (or at least is supposed to require) someone testifying as to the proof of probable cause UNDER OATH.

"...and no warrants shall issue, but upon PROBABLE CAUSE, SUPPORTED BY OATH OR AFFIRMATION..."

And what that means, or should mean, is that someone is in court, either in person or over the phone, swearing to the facts, under oath, under penalty of perjury.

Part of the point of getting a warrant, is that some cop is so sure of the facts that he's willing to put his ass on the line for perjury charges if he gets busted for fibbing to the judge about it.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[arth1]

People who transmit their voice using radio should be educated that they are doing that, not coddled into thinking there is some magic that turns the insecure medium they are using into a secure one. And people who carry devices that they know can be used to track them whereever they go should learn to live with the natural result of their decision, not have artificial legal protections put in place to allow them their convenience while avoiding the results of their decisions.

And people who radiate heat should know that it could be used to track them even through curtains and walls?

I don't think so. There's something known as "a reasonable expectation of privacy". When lawmakers in the 19th century talked about "a walk in the woods" having an expectation of privacy, I'm fairly certain that they didn't mean that you should be free to track their location.
Unless you deliberately broadcast where you are, you should have the expectation that no-one is triangulating traffic the average user may not even knows exists.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Obfuscant]

And people who radiate heat should know that it could be used to track them even through curtains and walls?

Hmm. Already discussed and ruled on. Did you choose to radiate heat or is it an inevitable result of being alive? Next.

There's something known as "a reasonable expectation of privacy".

Yes, there is. "Transmitting my voice by unencrypted radio signals and receiving unencrypted radio signals in return" should yield no expectation of privacy to a reasonable person. The reason why legislation was enacted to "protect" such ignorant people was two-fold: first was to protect the profits of the cell phone companies* because second it was being proven beyond a shadow of doubt that the system had no privacy. That latter issue was why nobody should have had an expectation of privacy. We lied to ignorant people by telling them that they had privacy when transmitting their signals in the clear and created stupid laws to make them feel better. And a lot of us laughed our asses off while we listened to morons talking about extremely personal matters over a medium where they had no true privacy.

* cell phone companies who, I might add, had taken NO steps to protect their users by using even the most minimal of encryption or scrambling, despite the technology to do so being quite trivial. It would have cost too much to do that! Frequency inversion is ridiculously simple, and they didn't even do that. That's how much the cell phone companies cared about your privacy.

Now it is mapping into cell phone location data, which is created by the cell phone company in order for the system to work. Reasonable people should realize that a system that relies on knowing where your phone is so it can function will know where you are when you are with your phone. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding your location when you carry a device that tracks your location for a corporate purpose. It's not even your data, it's the cell phone company's data. You didn't create it, they did. You don't use it, they do.

Unlike the thermal imaging issue you refer to earlier, all you have to do to stop them from tracking you is turn your phone off. It doesn't even take special equipment to track you, it's a built-in mandatory function of the system you choose to use.

When lawmakers in the 19th century talked about "a walk in the woods" having an expectation of privacy, I'm fairly certain that they didn't mean that you should be free to track their location.

Anyone who thought they had a right to privacy when walking in a public woods where anyone might see them, and might follow them, is a loon. Period. Tracking was a valuable skill in the 1800s, even today, and people then knew it was possible. Anyone who walks through the public woulds leaving tracks is a loon for thinking they have some reasonable expectation that they either will not be seen or not be tracked. You have a right to make tracks in the woods, I have the right to follow them. You have a right to be in the woods, I have the right to see you. There is no reasonable law that would ever say that I have to close my eyes so I cannot see what you are doing just because you think you have a right to privacy when walking in public.

Unless you deliberately broadcast where you are, you should have the expectation that no-one is triangulating traffic the average user may not even knows exists.

Well, you deliberately carry a device that must know where you are to work properly. That's deliberate, to me. And your right to be ignorant does not impose an unreasonable requirement to ignore where you are on my part.

Re:"in the vicinity"

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting IMEI info should be fine, it's what the cell tower knows. Attaching a name should require a warrant.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Anonymous Coward]

2 men bashed for pointing a toy dinosaur at 2 policemen. The bashing only stops when a policewoman walks in. The 2 policemen are promoted. The policewoman - who testified against the policemen - is bullied out of the police force. Not only are the 2 policemen not punished, they're both promoted.

Yeah: I have confidence in our legal system.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you have a home you are just asking to be broken into."

"If you keep a wallet you are just asking to be robbed."

"If you reveal your forearms you are just asking to be sexually assaulted."

Once you go down this road it leads to madness. Oh, and it's not an "electronic beacon", it's called a phone. You called it an electronic beacon to try to win your point. Your tactic has failed.

People, citizens, have a reasonable expectation of privacy. US citizens have the right to be secure in their papers. This is all settled law. The issue is, law enforcement sees the new technology as an opportunity to expand their powers and they are going for it.

I don't fault them for trying, it's their logical default position to ask for an easier job and more power. However they need to be told firmly, "No. You have the mechanism of warrants and that system properly balances the need for order with the rights of citizens against unwanted intrusion."

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Obfuscant]

Do you think the police need a warrant to peruse through your credit card statements at will or perhaps take a look at your bank accounts whenever they feel the need to ?

You created that information. You did not create the location information that the cell phone company measured.

The bottom line is this: If you want identifying or detailed information of any kind on an individual, then a warrant shoud be required.

I see you rob a bank. Should the police have to get a warrant before I tell them what you were wearing, what the license plate number of the car you were driving was, or perhaps even your name and address if I recognized you? That's "detailed information" on an individual.

The bank has cameras. Should the police be required to get a warrant to get copies of the video from the bank you robbed, or can the bank hand it over without concern for your fourth amendment rights?

A customer pulled out their cell phone without you noticing it and they started recording video of you. Can they give this to the cops without them needing a warrant?

In your glee at making off with a few thousand bucks, you call a friend, who calls the cops on you. Do they need a warrant for that, too? Would you seriously claim that the police need to get a warrant to listen to the 911 tape of your friend reporting some very specific information about you and your location and what you had told him you did?

Regardless of where the information is stored, it still pertains to an individual.

The difference is who created the data, not where it is stored.

Re:"in the vicinity"

[Obfuscant]

Requiring the police to get a warrant may slow this process down by several minutes.

It might prevent this from happening at all, but I think that's what you were actually trying to convey. Your scenario might be "fishing", but a more relevant scenario would be narrowing the field down to half a dozen suspects and then asking if any of them was in the vicinity during both events -- which would be more likely to be approved for a warrant, were one to be necessary.

It would be like needing to get a warrant before questioning the valet at the club about seeing any of the suspects being there both times. He's got data "about someone". Should a warrant be required before the police can get any data "about someone"?

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Anonymous Coward]

No reasonable person would think that in order to use a modern phone they would have to give up All expectations of privacy.

Doesnâ(TM)t hold water. If the ma Bell old telephone company had somehow figured out which hard line went where and labeled them all, it wouldnâ(TM)t have eliminated a personâ(TM)s expectation of privacy, nor does it do it there.

I like the standard if a normal person doesnâ(TM)t have access to the info then for the government to get it should require a warrant.

Re:"in the vicinity"

[Dread_ed]

They didn't release any information about you. They released information about their towers.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Cyberax]

A lot of things endanger life. So what's your point? I've pointed out that even in your (pretty crazy) scenario it's extremely easy to obtain a warrant. It can quite literally be done in 15 minutes if officers so desire.

Re:"in the vicinity"

[Anonymous Coward]

If no warrant is required, then how is the phone company supposed to know it is a legitimate crime investigation, and not some cop trying to track down the guy dating his ex-girlfriend?

Maybe they don't need to know.

I'm not a cop, or employed by any government in any fashion. Just Joe Private Citizen here. Suppose I want to track down the guy dating my ex-girlfriend. Further suppose that I ask a friend who operates a cell tower, "hey, can I have some logs of all the times this particular id connected?"

You can make a good case for why my cell-tower-operator friend shouldn't give me the info I want. For him to comply is the kind of thing that I think nearly all of us think of as unethical.

But is it illegal for him to? I won't be using a warrant. I'll just be asking, not demanding or using any sort of force or intimidation or lawyerese obfuscation. Just "hey dude, help a friend out." Can't he say yes? It's his information, not the stalkee's.

If it's legal for him to do that, then I think the it's legal for him to do the government the same favor.

Re:"in the vicinity"

[Zxern]

I really don't see how that passes muster though. If the phone company wanted they could record your calls and turn them over as well because of the third party rule, but that was decided when we were far more reasonable about privacy rights.

Re:"in the vicinity"

[BankRobberMBA]

While there was lots of debate about the goals of the government and the inherent difference between following someone 24/7 and using technology to track someone 24/7, the case was decided on the grounds that the police went on to the suspects property and touched his car to install the tracker, which constituted trespassing.

If I remember right, it went 5-4 to overturn and the surprise swing vote was John Roberts.

Obviously, a request for cellphone metadata and location information from triangulation would not involve criminal trespass.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Obfuscant]

So what's your point?

That there are times when time matters.

I've pointed out that even in your (pretty crazy) scenario

There is nothing crazy about a dementia walk-away scenario. It happens a lot more than perhaps you realize, and will only happen more often as a larger percentage of the population reaches the age where dementia is common.

It can quite literally be done in 15 minutes if officers so desire.

If you can find a judge that fast. It is much easier to send in the form signed by the appropriate party (which is often just the dispatcher who is already handling the traffic) and get the data, and that still takes more than 15 minutes. Adding an extra step cannot make the process faster.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Obfuscant]

No reasonable person would think that in order to use a modern phone they would have to give up All expectations of privacy.

Straw man. Nobody said anything about all expectations of privacy. The issue is privacy in data that you did not create and do not own, but a reasonable person knows is being collected and can prevent with one simple act.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Cyberax]

Oh fuck off. Let's just skip to GESTAPO hauling people away because "time matters". What if you commit a treason in the next 5 minutes? Can't wait for it, can we?

If you can find a judge that fast.

Officers have judges on-call 24h and can get a warrant in minutes if they want. Typically it takes a couple of hours at most.

Re:"in the vicinity"

[Zxern]

Why should that be fine though? You can only see your IMEI information. You can't see that information for anyone else so why should the police get it with no warrant?

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Zxern]

That didn't work for pots lines why should it work cell phones?

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Obfuscant]

Oh fuck off.

Well, that convinced me of the validity of your argument.

Let's just skip to GESTAPO hauling people away because "time matters".

Godwin suits you. How you leap from being able to get the location of a dementia walk-away to "hauling people away" because they might commit treason is amazing.

Typically it takes a couple of hours at most.

In a couple of hours a dementia patient can freeze to death at worst, walk out of cell range and be really lost, drown, or any number of things. They're pretty amazing for being old and demented. We had one guy where we had just started setting up for the search close to his house, and he was located when he walked into the University library ten miles away "looking disoriented".

I'm glad that you don't have anyone who might fit into the "need to find him fast" category, but to force searches to waste time getting location data because you're worried that they're going to haul you away for treason based on your cell location data is just pathetic. If you're that worried, then you better worry more. If you are suspected of treason there won't be any problem getting a warrant. You had better just turn you cell phone off when you are committing treason to be safe from the surveilance state.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Zxern]

"You created that information. You did not create the location information that the cell phone company measured."

I'm pretty sure I created the data by having my phone in the vicinity of that tower at that time. The phone company is simply logging it, just like the credit card company is simply logging your transactions.

Try again.

Re:"in the vicinity"

[Anonymous Coward]

" revealing details of Americans' lives merely by examining records kept by Verizon, T-Mobile and other cellphone service companies"
The Federal government has been able to see the details of Americans way before the advent of the Internet or cell phone technology. US Federal, State, and County tax records can pretty much deconstruct anyone's life. And the governments do not need a warrant to access this treasure trove of data anytime the want.

It can be argued that cell phone and tower use occurs in the public sphere where privacy protections do not apply to data captured to facilitate transmitting a signal from point A to point B. The FCC already claims jurisdiction on all electro-magnetic spectrum used for transmitting communication signals of all types. Read the fine print on your cell phone owners agreement and you will see no promises from your cell phone provider guaranteeing to protect your privacy. The companies operating the cell towers are obligated to provide the government with data when asked or face the possibility of not being a granted a federal operations license.

In this particular case Law enforcement is not asking for the content of the communications. The NSA use of call records collected from the major telecoms did not involve any content either. The NSA wanted access to the call transaction from/to number but not any content. If the NSA or other intelligence agency wanted to track down individuals or groups a single telephone number fed into the from/to call transaction data can generate a map of every phone associated with the original number. The government COULD abuse this capability but depriving national security related agencies of a tool because they MAY abuse it the future is a little short sighted. Most of the arguments for depriving the national security and law enforcement agencies of these types of tools and methods is based on the preposterous belief that the US faces no security threats. In reality the US is attacked in one form or another every day. Intelligence agencies from across the world are running intelligence operations to obtain information from all sectors of the US. Military, Government, and Industry are targeted everyday from everyone.

When you are out in public using your cell phone you expectation of privacy when it comes to using cell tower records to pinpoint your location. When you use any of the popular navigation applications or other applications that require you to activate your location setting you willingly allow a 3rd party to capture and store your location data. A lot of the conflict today is people not recognizing there is a big difference between privacy and anonymity. We already have the power to protect our privacy. There is no law requiring you to use a cell phone were your privacy may be infringed upon. There is no law forcing you to divulge your life story on Facebook or any other social networking service. Anonymity can only be achieved by living in a cave in the middle of no where and hiding your thermal signature from any orbiting satellites. And no social progress or change has ever been accomplished by an anonymous activist. Great social changes though out history always includes the names of those who fought for the change (good or bad) and made a difference.

The government COULD do a lot of things detrimental to a citizens rights and that's why we have courts. Courts at all levels that routinely adjudicate claims of a persons rights being denied. You here voluminous complaints from people claiming their rights have been violated but when you delve into the details you find no rights violations. You have people who honestly do not even understand the rights they are accusing others of violating. Society needs to be open to hearing such complaints but not summarily accept such claims as the truth. Supporting claims of violated rights based solely on political biases never results in any thing positive.

Law enforcement and the general public order

Law enforcement use off cell tower data during a criminal investigation

Re: "in the vicinity"

[currently_awake]

Your medical records are created by your doctor, so clearly they belong to him and he can hand them out without a warrant, right?

Re:"in the vicinity"

[currently_awake]

Popular people don't need human rights, they have friends to protect them. Defending human rights therefore always involves protecting the worst people.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Cyberax]

Can you find a SINGLE FUCKING EXAMPLE of a demented person not getting found because police was not able to get records in time? Nope, you can't.

So in order to "fix" a completely fake news scenario you're proposing to kill the privacy completely. I'd say anti-Godwin suits this just fine.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Anonymous Coward]

It's almost like we have laws written about wiretapping. Maybe, if you the no his is important, you should ge Al Franken to stop groping women for a moment and write a law protecting this information.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you shitting me? Yes, all reasonable people know that their phone is being tracked by a company they're paying. All literate people should be aware that the phone companies and manufacturers are tracking the,phone location. You're just lying.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Anonymous Coward]

I did not give consent to the cell phone company to keep logs for the government to go through in the first place. The government mandated that, too. The functions can operate without storing logs, and the police can operate without breaking or bending the law of the land.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Anonymous Coward]

Giving access to that information would get him fired. Same way a nurse giving your medical information would get canned for telling you someone else's medical information.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[ImprovOmega]

Not a good analogy. The HIPAA laws tightly regulate access to medical records. There are no similar laws protecting your cellphone tower data (yet). So currently if a private company, like Verizon, decides to make it a policy to hand over those records on request from the police, that's their business. However if this leads Congress to pass a law regulating that data then it may take it out of their hands.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[Obfuscant]

I'm pretty sure I created the data by having my phone in the vicinity of that tower at that time.

I'm pretty sure you are wrong. The cell phone company determined your location, you did not tell them.

The phone company is simply logging it,

No.

Re: "in the vicinity"

[tsqr]

Giving access to that information would get him fired. Same way a nurse giving your medical information would get canned for telling you someone else's medical information.

Same way, really? Thank you; I didn't know cell tower records were covered by HIPAA.

Re:"in the vicinity"

[Agripa]

If no warrant is required, then how is the phone company supposed to know it is a legitimate crime investigation, and not some cop trying to track down the guy dating his ex-girlfriend?

The phone company knows because police honor is above reproach; they would never ask for data which they were not legally entitled to. The phone company also knows because they have a nice company and it would be a shame if something happened to it.

Re:"in the vicinity"

[st0nes]

A one-armed robber?

How did they already have the data?

[plague911]

TFA and the summation do not state. How did LEA get the data? Did the Telco give over the information voluntarily? Yes? No search warrant needed. No? Search warrant needed. Lets not forget, this is their data, not ours. We signed away the ownership of that kind of data a long long time ago.

Re:How did they already have the data?

[bluefoxlucid]

Unacceptable. This is not public information; even voluntary release of your information by the tower operator should be considered a search of your private dealings. We have wire tapping laws because you can just ask the telco to tap a persons line--voluntary release of data by the telco--and that serves as a stand-in for illegally entering your house without a warrant and placing listening devices (search).

Obtaining non-public information from a third party is akin to wire tapping. It's not the same thing; therefor we need stronger privacy laws.

Re:How did they already have the data?

[Archangel Michael]

It is not public information, but it is also not yours, or my information that we own. It is like getting the video from the liquor store cameras to ID the bastard that just robbed it.

It is exactly the same thing, information about your whereabouts from a third party. No warrant needed.

And if you think that only the Cell companies are tracking your every move, you're very mistaken. Every large box store, every website, every app, everything you do is being tracked right now. Short of being a luddite cave dweller, there is nothing you can do to stop it.

Shop at BigBoxCo, your purchase is linked to you (unless you use cash everywhere 100% of the time). Result, when you finally get the BigBoxCo Credit Card, it already knows what you've purchased even without using it.

That Gaming ap you use to catch pocketmonsters ? Tracking you.
That Speedometer, Traffic App, Map App, Ride Hailing App ... Tracking you.

The fact is, there are about a million datapoints per year per person ... all tracking you.

And you don't even need to use Facebook for the world to know about you.

Re: How did they already have the data?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're fucking broadcasting it. How is that not public? This isn't about whispers to your lover, it's what you're yelling in a megaphone, in public. The telephone? Confined to the wires, but broadcasting means p, literally, sending out to a broad area. Note that this isn't even about the content of the conversation, which is protected by wiretap laws (appropriately, as GSM and later encryption provide a reasonable expectation of privacy) just about records of you blasting out public ally a code that's personally identifiable, and companies that you've paid to reciev and record that signal doing so.

Following your logic a little further, then it would be okay to prosecute people for having radios without a license to hear the transmissions. I mean, okay in Britain, but not in the US.

Re:How did they already have the data?

[bluefoxlucid]

It is not public information, but it is also not yours, or my information that we own. It is like getting the video from the liquor store cameras to ID the bastard that just robbed it.

In which case you know there was a robbery and you have reason to believe the video contains the details of the crime.

That's a bit different than walking in and saying, hey, give me all the video on this guy. No reason, just I want it. It's also a bit different from the liquor store reporting a crime and surrendering video related to the details of that crime: they're not under law enforcement order to surrender that information, and are attaching it as relevant to a crime which has been committed against them.

Further, places with CCTV announce they have CCTV. This is to avoid laws forbidding them from recording you without consent of all involved parties.

By contrast, your cell phone provider may or may not be storing data about you long-term, but is presumably recording information for a time—long enough to keep track of where you are at the moment, so the towers function, at a minimum. If you commit a crime against their network, they have every right to bundle relevant data up and submit it with their complaint to the police or courts. Typically, the police initiate the contact, and request they surrender data about you.

There's no reason the government should be allowed to arbitrarily poke into non-public information about you. If they don't have and cannot obtain a warrant, they shouldn't be allowed to thumb through private data at their leisure to build a case about your contact patterns so as to open up an investigation against you. No, they shouldn't be allowed to just request CCTV data, either--your shop can volunteer the relevant recordings when reporting a crime, and they can ask you for the relevant recordings if the next guy over got robbed and they believe you captured something of that, as they'll have a warrant for obtaining that data.

Re:How did they already have the data?

[Archangel Michael]

1) As a libertarian, I would prefer a vastly more limited government that fought real crimes like theft, and assault and less on non-crimes like drugs and alcohol.
2) As a libertarian, I would prefer the corporate guardians of information said "Can I have a warrant please" and not willingly give up information just because it is the police. In fact, I would prefer if EVERYONE said that to a cop when they ask questions.
3) The world isn't libertarian, but is tending more towards the fascism (real kind, not the ANTIFA kind) that is antithetical to liberty of citizens, so point 1 and 2 are moot.

There are quite a number of people who want more and bigger government who involves itself into more and more of our lives demanding we give up essential rights for temporary security, and I realize that I am arguing a losing battle here. Which is why I said what I said. In the end, it doesn't matter what you or I think, it only matters what a dozen people in black robes think. And they don't think like you or I.

Re:How did they already have the data?

[msauve]

It is like getting the video from the liquor store cameras to ID the bastard that just robbed it....No warrant needed."

But a warrant is needed if the liquor store owner doesn't want to voluntarily give up the video. And a warrant is justified for a reasonable search, since it's virtually a certainty that the thief is on the video.

Getting location records for thousands of cellular customers is an unreasonable search. No only is it not certain that the perp is in the data, it is a certainty that the vast majority of data (which the cellco's had promised to keep confidential) is related to innocent citizens.

The 4th Amendment is there to protect against fishing expeditions, which this is.

Re:How did they already have the data?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

This case is seeking to overturn the "we signed away the data". As in, we signed away the data cause the telcos needed it to do a job. This is trying to reverse that law so just giving them access to do a job doesn't mean they own the data.

Also, you do not need a search warrant to get telco data. Since it's their data on you, you have no 4th amendment rights. And, since it's their data on you, they have no 4th amendment rights. I mean, they can charge something because it costs them money to comply, but that 's it.

Re:How did they already have the data?

[Obfuscant]

In which case you know there was a robbery and you have reason to believe the video contains the details of the crime. That's a bit different than walking in and saying, hey, give me all the video on this guy. No reason, just I want it.

The story did not say that the police went to the phone company and asked for location data about every person in the area. They asked for a specific person's data. Why? Because they had a reason to believe the info relates to the crime.

Further, places with CCTV announce they have CCTV.

People carrying a cell phone are being tracked by the cell company.

If you commit a crime against their network, they have every right to bundle relevant data up and submit it with their complaint to the police or courts.

Two points you just made here. First, they own that data and can use it as they see fit without asking you. Second, they keep the data so they can prove any crimes, which may not come to completion for months. So: they own the data and they can keep it for a long time. If you truly thought the data was protected by warrant, then the phone company could not release it for their own benefit without your permission, but you claim they can do that. Thus, there is no need for a warrant.

No, they shouldn't be allowed to just request CCTV data,

So the CCTV images collected by the store or company you are near don't belong to them, they belong to you? If they belong to the company, can't they do with them what they please?

and they can ask you for the relevant recordings if the next guy over got robbed and they believe you captured something of that, as they'll have a warrant for obtaining that data.

You admit that the cops can ask for data. If the company gives them the data just by asking, they don't need a warrant. If they have a warrant, it isn't "asking" anymore.

Warrants are intended to stop involuntary release of information. If you let a cop in your front door he doesn't need a warrant to see what he sees. YOU volunteered to let him be in a place where he might see something. If a telephone company voluntarily releases their data about you, it doesn't need a warrant.

You've admitted that a telephone company can release location data about you if they are reporting a crime you've committed against them. Here's the interesting bit about legal theory. Do yo ever wonder why a criminal case is not "Joe Smith vs. Bob Jones", but is "The State of Michigan vs. Bob Jones"? The legal theory is that a crime is committed against the state -- all of us -- and thus is prosecuted by the state.

Re:How did they already have the data?

[Obfuscant]

Getting location records for thousands of cellular customers is an unreasonable search.

The story is about location data for one cellular customer. The court case is about that one convicted criminal.

Re:How did they already have the data?

[bluefoxlucid]

So the CCTV images collected by the store or company you are near don't belong to them, they belong to you?

They don't belong to the police, they're not public information, and the police can't walk in and demand videos of you.

You admit that the cops can ask for data. If the company gives them the data just by asking, they don't need a warrant. If they have a warrant, it isn't "asking" anymore.

There have been attempts to force them to turn over data without a warrant. Lots of attempts. The judge pondering the need for a warrant is completely-irrelevant unless the police are allowed to force the release of data without a warrant in one scenario.

You've admitted that a telephone company can release location data about you if they are reporting a crime you've committed against them.

Yep. They have the right to do that, they have standing, and they're reporting a crime. They're volunteering evidence.

If the police order you to allow them to search your house, sans warrant, anything they find is inadmissable in court. Permanently. If you volunteer them a look at your basement marijuana operation, then... well, your fault.

The police should not have the power to compel the release of non-public data without a warrant. We could go a step further and require the police to not ask after it without a warrant unless in conjunction with a reported crime, because the third party has less stake than you. Wiretapping laws actually go further: the police can't tap the phone lines just because Verizon says it's okay; it's your privacy they're invading, by statute, making it a Fourth Amendment violation against you. It's not unreasonable to create new statutes to bring other non-public data under such protection; at the moment, however, they don't have the power to compel the release of that data without a warrant.

Re:How did they already have the data?

[Anonymous Coward]

Morally disagree. When Government can tell when you are standing in front of your refrigerator and what you take out of it; when they can tell when you go to the bathroom and how much water you use to full; when they can tell when you are standing or sitting or walking; when they can tell when you are having sex (based on heartrate, motion, etc); etc ... the Government and 3rd parties should not have easy access to that information.

We have a relationship with the telco's for phone service and that is it -- using information on us for 3rd party usage is just morally wrong. We need to nip this in the bud even if current law is not clear enough YET.

Re: How did they already have the data?

[Anonymous Coward]

1) As a libertarian, I would prefer a vastly more limited government that fought real crimes like theft, and assault and less on non-crimes like drugs and alcohol.

Too many people commit crimes with drugs and alcohol, you would be better advised to suggest other means. In fact, there are arguments that the US needs more government oversight of both industries.

2) As a libertarian, I would prefer the corporate guardians of information said "Can I have a warrant please" and not willingly give up information just because it is the police. In fact, I would prefer if EVERYONE said that to a cop when they ask questions.

Great, another non-solution as suddenly you can't even trust the cops enough to tell them that some guy just went that way...

Don't snitch is a reaction to bad policing, not an end in itself.

3) The world isn't libertarian, but is tending more towards the fascism (real kind, not the ANTIFA kind) that is antithetical to liberty of citizens, so point 1 and 2 are moot.

You need to learn to use better words than fascism. Which is far too contaminated by its own origins to be useful in any kind of technical sense even aside from the dissension regarding its meaning evident today.

There are quite a number of people who want more and bigger government who involves itself into more and more of our lives demanding we give up essential rights for temporary security, and I realize that I am arguing a losing battle here.

Well, you are uselessly railing in a hysterical fashion while completely misunderstanding what is occurring in the world, which is less government and more exploitation by entities that subvert legitimate moral principles of suffrage to eliminate our securities and curtail our liberties, but you just got fooled by the snow job.

Which is why I said what I said. In the end, it doesn't matter what you or I think, it only matters what a dozen people in black robes think. And they don't think like you or I.

Only nine members on the Supreme Court, and they aren't, despite some pretensions otherwise, the final arbiter, in fact, Congress could easily pass a law to resolve it in favor of the people if desired, as the RFRA shows, Congress can bind government further. And they should nonetheless be answerable to the people.

I do how they don't think like you though, your cogitation levels are demonstrably poor, but unfortunately, I have little hope for Thomas, Alito, or Gorsuch.

Especially Alto, he is crass enough to refuse to join a majority that came to the outcome his own principles supported because of a tedious objection to the majority's language, which is bad enough, but then he joined the dissents in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission just to be spiteful.

Sadly, that is the way you think.

Re:How did they already have the data?

[msauve]

"Lets not forget, this is their data, not ours."

Let's not forget, most cell companies today have contractual privacy policies in place which promise to safeguard such information unless disclosed "to comply with valid legal process." Additionally, Federal law (47USC222) specifically burdens cellcos with maintaining such records in confidence. It's not "their data" to do with as they want.

Contrast to Smith v. Maryland, where the court's reasoning for not requiring a warrant for so-called "meta-data" hinged on a lack of a reasonable expectation of privacy. At the time, there was no promise of privacy for the data as there is today.

Re:How did they already have the data?

[Obfuscant]

They don't belong to the police, they're not public information, and the police can't walk in and demand videos of you.

They can, however, ask, and be given, without requiring a warrant. That's the point here. The plaintiff here says a warrant is needed. You and I seem to agree that one is not. You want to go further and talk about whether the police can demand something without a warrant, but that's outside the scope of this legal issue.

If the police order you to allow them to search your house, sans warrant,

Nothing about this case deals with the police ordering anything.

Wiretapping laws actually go further: the police can't tap the phone lines just because Verizon says it's okay;

This case has even less to do with wiretapping. Getting location data is not wiretapping.

Re:How did they already have the data?

[jader3rd]

How did LEA get the data?

Some of the guys in the gang started talking, and mentioned that Timothy Carpenter was at all of the burglaries. The cops decided to see if his cell data confirmed what the were saying. So they asked the cell company, and lo and behold, the cell tower pings match what the other people were saying.

Re:How did they already have the data?

[AHuxley]

A cell-site simulator, digital analyzer. The IMSI-catcher gets it all.
Once LEO knows of everyone in the area over days, weeks, months it just a GUI map to replay that day, hour, time.
The more wealthy cities, states, federal/state funded police efforts have long term voice prints collections at a city/state level too :) Swapping a phone, buying a new cell phone is no protection from mil grade voice print collection thats now at big city contractor prices.
Just never let a good lawyer find the city/state budget paper work on all that. As in real paperwork, printed out and kept some gov office that the public can still request to look at, photograph in person.
Computer FOIA searches at a federal, state and city will often be very limited as not to show funding, what the upgraded hardware was and its costs.
Understating flights over an area can be good too, LETC (law enforcement technical collection) upgrades to front company registered single engine aircraft that fly into and out of the same airport and just circle a city. 2 miles around is about all a low cost LEO cell site collection could do from a low cost aircraft. That will collect every cell phone, network all but a longer distance to collect from was a problem.
If the federal government pays, its mil grade, pressurized cabin systems that do not have follow the same small aircraft patterns. More power, more collection, very different flight paths.

The other reason its so well hidden is US law enforcement cannot trust telco workers, lawyers, the courts, city, sate, federal workers, ex mil, cult and faith members, dual citizens not to sell/talk about/walk out LEO methods.
So US police finally know to keep everything well hidden from everyone around them.
US LEO finally understood why the UK could do so much with more limited funding. The UK gov was smart and never told lawyers, human rights lawyers, the media, telco workers, staff, police, criminals of their advanced mil collection secrets.

Re:How did they already have the data?

[Dread_ed]

"Additionally, Federal law (47USC222) specifically burdens cellcos with maintaining such records in confidence. It's not "their data" to do with as they want."

Looking at it another way, one could get the distinct impression that the Feds think this data is theirs, the telcos are just collecting and storing it for later use in prosecutions.

Re:How did they already have the data?

[currently_awake]

There is a huge difference between choosing to hand over what you have/know, and having a man with a gun come demand it. It's the same as a school teacher "Asking" one of his teen students out on a date. People in power need special rules to prevent them from taking advantage of others.

Re: How did they already have the data?

[Archangel Michael]

Well, you are uselessly railing in a hysterical fashion while completely misunderstanding what is occurring in the world, which is less government and more exploitation by entities that subvert legitimate moral principles of suffrage to eliminate our securities and curtail our liberties, but you just got fooled by the snow job.

So, you're arguing that either we need more government or that government is just about right, right at this moment.

Lets look at Net Neutrality for a second, Mkay?

1) Everything the Net Neutrality people are asking for is more government. More government telling people how to run businesses, putting smaller more agile companies it harder to comply (and thus go out of business) with government regulations. So, the end result is exactly the opposite of what is intended, which is larger monopolies where you only get one choice (see point 2), which is eerily similar to communism. You can have anything you want, as long as it is government approved.

2) Net Neutrality problems are inherited from previous big government decisions, namely franchise agreements for local CableTV and Local Telco services. It worked when in infancy to get tech to the house (Last mile) , but now, it is the problem that there is only one(or two) choice(s) for land based High Speed Internet. That monopoly is now trying to protect its networks from more competition and attacking what little Net Neutrality there is.

The solution isn't "more" centralized powerful (i.e. Federal) government, it is freeing up the local municipalities from restrictions that prevent them from building the modern infrastructure needed to support liberated free high speed internet. My solution to the Net Neutrality is to allow local municipalities to build out a common last mile to a COLO facility that provides access to any and all service providers to provide any service they want, at any price they want. You could have your Net Neutral 100% No throttling, No Shaping, fast internet, and find out that it is being sucked down by the two assholes torrenting their HD porn Libraries.

But that is so "out there" that most people won't even consider it, because it doesn't have Three Letter Agency in charge of the fascist large corporate government . Again the fix isn't more government, it is less, and what does exist, be locally controlled rather than bureaucratically controlled from 2500 miles away.

Err on side of rights

[superdave80]

If you have to think about it for too long, then you should err on the side of individual rights. When, exactly, did getting a warrant become such a burden on law enforcement?

Re:Err on side of rights

[Anonymous Coward]

Individual rights ceased to exist in the panic-storm after 9/11. Right now we're dealing with the phantom ghosts of individual rights that will slowly cease to matter as people that have grown up with the constant surveillance state around them come to power and those of us that find it all suspiciously creepy die-off.

Getting a warrant is time consuming, and often requires actual facts to pursue a suspect. This gets in the way of arrest rates and pinning crimes on individuals that may or may not actually be involved in said crimes. It's more important to find a scapegoat that actually catch the real culprit. Intensify the fear and outrage, mystify the processes of the legal system and keep most of us ignorant and confused.

Re:Err on side of rights

[Baron_Yam]

> When, exactly, did getting a warrant become such a burden on law enforcement?

Shortly after the police discovered they could get access to information they wanted, and as soon as they realized they could get it faster without a warrant.

data exists

[Anonymous Coward]

Your cellphone is literally screaming out its location to anyone who wants to hear it... and then you're surprised when someone builds a database of your whereabouts and lets law enforcement search it?

If you're that paranoid, stop using a cellphone.

(no, having telecom companies stop "saving the location data" is not going to fix this... this data is just too valuable not to track... FB and google have an eye on it).

Life sentence...

[b0s0z0ku]

The accused in the case robbed some Radio Shacks and cell phone stores and (ironically) stole phones. He didn't kill or seriously maim anyone.

How does what amounts to a life sentence make sense for this crime? Especially while pharma CEOs who get people hooked on opioids, polluters who cause cancer clusters, etc walk free.

Answer: it was his punishment for requesting a jury trial, not entering into a plea bargain under threat of a severe sentence. This case embodies a lot of what is wrong with the American injustice system. Even if you have no sympathy for the accused, remember that the taxpayers will be paying to jail him for life, instead of giving him a reasonable sentence and rehabilitating him.

This is money that can be spent on other services or simply returned to the taxpayers. Beyond disgusting.

Re:Life sentence...

[Anonymous Coward]

The accused in the case robbed some Radio Shacks and cell phone stores and (ironically) stole phones. He didn't kill or seriously maim anyone.

so it's okay to threaten people with death, as long as you don't actually do it.

you have no place in a civilized society if you think there is a grand chasm between armed robbery and attempted murder, where one is a minor infraction and the other is a major felony

Re:Life sentence...

[b0s0z0ku]

I never said it was OK -- I said that the sentence exceeds the crime.

Re:Life sentence...

[Anonymous Coward]

when someone repeatedly threatens others with death, why is a harsh sentence not justified?

Re:Life sentence...

[MightyYar]

How does what amounts to a life sentence make sense for this crime?

Because robbery with a firearm carries a minimum mandatory sentence. He was convicted of several counts, which all add up. I have mixed feelings about this - the sentence seems excessive, but this wasn't a single lapse in judgement. He's a violent criminal, and society may very well be better off with him locked up, cost be damned. I don't know what the parole rules are for federal armed robbery, but I suspect he'll be released earlier than his life sentence would let on.

Re:Life sentence...

[b0s0z0ku]

By this argument, anyone who punches someone in a bar fight should get a life sentence, because the punch COULD have caused death.

Re:Life sentence...

[b0s0z0ku]

Congress abolished Federal parole in the 1980s. At most, he'll get ~25% credit for time served, which is still essentially a life sentence.

He WAS a violent criminal at one point in his life. Without knowing the background, he might well be able to be rehabilitated. Cases like this are why mandatory minima and lack of parole based on actions in prison are a bad idea.

Obama and his attorneys general were moving towards a fairer sentencing regime. I suspect that Trump and his evil elf from Alabama will undo eight years of progress in that direction.

Re:Life sentence...

[Wrath0fb0b]

According to the decision it wasn't just robbery:

At his signal, the robbers entered the store, brandished their guns, herded customers and employees to the back, and ordered the employees to fill the robbersâ(TM) bags with new smartphones.

There's a world of difference between shoplifting or even smashing a window and stealing phones after closing and an armed robbery where you put a gun to the face of some poor clerk. In the former cases, I would probably be inclined to leniency and rehabilitation (at least for the first 8 offenses) because they are crimes that don't involve direct violence against another human being.

I would also be inclined to leniency if this was a one-time offense or something else indicating a particular lapse of judgment or other thing. Instead, the record shows this was a string of similar, premeditated robberies in which the perps carefully planned and prepared, divided up the tasks and made arrangements to destroy the evidence and sell the stolen goods.

I would also be inclined to leniency if the individual was a bit player who was recruited to the scheme by others. This is especially true of those with mental handicaps, who are often pressured or duped into the worst roles in a criminal scheme. They are also the ones most often turned-against by co-conspirators who will be willing to assign them the blame for the worst in exchange for a lenient plea. Instead, the record shows that Carpenter was the ringleader of the criminal enterprise.

So yeah, the leader of a criminal group that repeatedly and violently assaulted innocent people with a firearm in the course of robbing them? This is not the case that I would push for as far as leniency.

[ Of course, I can see the government losing their case because they illegally relied on cell site evidence without a warrant. But that's not the issue at sentencing. ]

Re:Life sentence...

[b0s0z0ku]

Your and my definitions of "leniency" just differ. A harsh sentence for a non-murder crime (remember, people were threatened, not actually harmed) should be 15-20 years, not life. Leniency would be something like 1-5 years.

That's the way it works in most of the civilized world outside the US. A system that locks up 1% of its adult residents is broken.

Re:Life sentence...

[b0s0z0ku]

This was "repeatedly" over the course of a year or so, not of several decades. Separate the criminal from the gang, and rehabilitation becomes possible.

Re:Life sentence...

[Tailhook]

He didn't kill or seriously maim anyone.

These robberies involved repeatedly threatening people with firearms. It was pure luck no one got killed.

it was his punishment for requesting a jury trial

The huge delta between negotiated sentences and the consequence of jury trials is a reflection of how great the distance is between citizens and their rulers in the US. We use to hang people for this shit and I can't think of any good reasons why we aren't doing that today; just a lot of bad ones.

Re:Life sentence...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do fights you've been in typically end after one punch?

Do people call you "glass jaw"?

Re:Life sentence...

[b0s0z0ku]

The huge delta between negotiated sentences and the consequence of jury trials is a reflection of how great the distance is between citizens and their rulers in the US. We use to hang people for this shit and I can't think of any good reasons why we aren't doing that today; just a lot of bad ones.

Agreed on the first part.

Disagreed on the second part. We also used to:
* Lynch people of different races who chose to enter into a relationship
* Not allow people of different races to share public facilities or get married
* Jail consenting adults of the same gender for what they did in their private bedrooms

Just because we did it in the 1800s doesn't mean it's a good idea today.

Re:Life sentence...

[quantaman]

Was anyone killed or injured during these robberies? The fact they were armed with guns doesn't mean they intended to use those guns, it certainly introduces a lot more risk that such a thing could happen, but not 116 years worth.

More over, is someone who commits eight armed robberies eight times as bad as someone who commits one? Or four times as bad as someone who commits two? If not, then why do the sentences occur concurrently?

I draw a distinction between someone who is a one-time armed robber vs someone who is a repeated armed robber, but I don't think there's a big difference between someone who has performed three and eight.

Remember that most crimes are committed by young males and recidivism rates tend to be low, even if you put him away for 10 years he's probably not re-offending once he gets out.

Re:Life sentence...

[b0s0z0ku]

Especially if you provide educational/career-training opportunities (other than in crime from other inmates) while they are jailed for 10 years.

Yeah, one can make the argument that those opportunities aren't provided free to the public at large, but they SHOULD be. Free/cheap community college is a great thing -- glad that more enlightened states are floating the idea.

Re:Life sentence...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fairer to whom? I'd kind of rather that he stay in a place where he can't commit armed robbery for the rest of his life given how willing he has been to commit it in the past. Prison isn't just a punishment, it's there to prevent people from committing new crimes. He's been very willing to threaten to shoot people to make a few bucks. I'd kind of rather he not get more chances to do that.

Re:Life sentence...

[Anonymous Coward]

rehabilitation becomes possible.

nobody knows squat about the science of mental health but you are still willing to gamble lives on the judgment of people no better informed than Theodoric of York

Re:Life sentence...

[Wrath0fb0b]

I agree. 15-20 years for threatening people with a gun during a robbery, multiplied by at least 6 separate instances. Even at the low end of your range, that's 90 years.

I would like to reduce incarceration in the US, and I think there's plenty of scope to do that by treating drug addictions as a medical problem and by rehabilitating those not convicted of violent crimes.

On the record that's before us, this guy just isn't a candidate.

Re:Life sentence...

[b0s0z0ku]

I'd sooner trust a mental health professional than your average cop, juror, or judge (judges aren't even required to have a law degree in most of the USA).

Re:Life sentence...

[Wrath0fb0b]

Ask anyone who has actually experienced it, and they will concur: having a gun put up to your face in anger is definitely an injury.

I also draw a distinction between a one-time armed robber and a repeated & premeditated one. I though I called that out as a major factor in leniency.

As far as repeat offenders go, you understand that by "discounting" later occurrences you are actually incentivizing a criminal who has already committed one count to keep committing them right?

Re:Life sentence...

[b0s0z0ku]

Should be served concurrently -- the crimes were over a short period of time. The number of instances doesn't really speak to his willingness to re-offend in a decade or two.

Re:Life sentence...

[Anonymous Coward]

>recidivism rates tend to be low
Need a source on that. First thing I googled showed that recidivism rates was about 2/3 recidivism rate within three years of release. That's not "low."
https://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/Pages/welcome.aspx

Re:Life sentence...

[Wrath0fb0b]

Whoops, it was actually 8 separate instances, not just 6. So taking 15 years (your low estimate) times the 8 instances, gives 120 years, which is a hair above what he actually got.

In any case, 90 or 120 is pretty much the same sentence.

Re:Life sentence...

[b0s0z0ku]

(1) I've had a gun pulled on me by some stupid kid in a carjacking. I don't actually wish that kid death (or a lifetime in prison) if he was caught. The human brain doesn't fully develop until the mid-20s -- kid was maybe 15 and may have been pushed into doing it by older peers. This experience didn't make me more authoritarian or more likely to support "law and order." Rather, I saw the total uselessness of the police in this instance. (They found the car, then it disappeared from their impound lot.) This experience made me trust law enforcement much LESS than before.

(2) By the same argument, if the sentence for multiple armed robberies is the same as for murder (life in prison), aren't you providing an incentive for armed robbers to shoot any witnesses? We could argue about this all day.

Re:Life sentence...

[Ichijo]

We use to hang people for this shit and I can't think of any good reasons why we aren't doing that today; just a lot of bad ones.

Because sometimes the justice system makes mistakes, and when an innocent person is put to death, there is no way to make them whole again.

Re:Life sentence...

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

What are you talking about pinko libtard commie...

The whole world knows You! Yes!! Yay!!! has the best justice money can buy. OK?

Re:Life sentence...

[Wrath0fb0b]

So basically your position is that once you commit a crime, you should be able to commit additional instances of that crime for no additional penalty? It's like a buy-1-get-7 free deal! Rob one bank, get 15 years in jail. Rob another 3, that's fine it's still just 15 years in jail.

In that system, you would be stupid not to be a repeat offender!

Re:Life sentence...

[b0s0z0ku]

Make it an asymptotic curve with a max sentence or something like that :)

Re:Life sentence...

[Wrath0fb0b]

Yes, I would consider the immaturity of the defendant as a mitigation in sentencing.
Yes, I would consider that the ringleader (like Mr Carpenter) is more culpable than a kid "pushed into doing it".
Yes, being a victim of crime doesn't make you more 'law and order' or trust the police.

I think we agree more than we disagree here.

Re:Life sentence...

[Wrath0fb0b]

I mean, for most crimes it's a steeply ascending scale. First DUI, fine and 90 day suspension. Second DUI, 7 days in jail and a year suspension. Third DUI, 6 months prison, felony conviction, lifetime suspension.

I think we as a society recognize that one-time criminals can often be rehabilitated and that harsh sentences right off the bat are both unjust and perpetuate crime by making it nearly impossible for folks to reintegrate. That's why most sentencing scales upwards, not downwards, as the number of crimes increase.

Yours is a fine mathematical theory, but I just don't get the logic behind it :shrug:

Re:Life sentence...

[Anonymous Coward]

>...it was his punishment for requesting a jury trial...
    No it was the result.

When you start involving The Man and these infinite resources you're in the big leagues. And big league punishments are the natural results.
Not saying the guy deserved it, just saying that's why plea-deals etc are offered. It's to keep your situation low-key. If you want to jump into the deep end of the pool normally reserved for big fish, just know that it is very deep.

Re:Life sentence...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the problem with this ... this particular individual may (or may not) have deserved a life sentence.

But why should genuinely INNOCENT people be faced with excessively long sentences, which push them to plead to crimes they never committed? This is called a perversion of justice.

The only people who "deserve" it are the political scum who wrote our excessive sentencing laws in the 80s and 90s. And by "it", I mean anything humiliating or terrible that befalls them -- whether it's outing as a predator as happened to that Christard Roy Moore, or simply a disease (say ALS) that causes years of suffering and debility before the final conclusion.

Re:Life sentence...

[Tailhook]

Grievance shit: #1 on the list of bad reasons.

Re:Life sentence...

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't a "repeat offense" if there was no incarceration in the middle.

116 Years?!?

[quantaman]

Armed robbery is bad, and multiple armed robberies is worse, but 116 years seems like overkill.

I know it's not the point of the article... but I feel like the sentencing algorithms have some bugs.

Re:116 Years?!?

[b0s0z0ku]

Bugs? No. They're features.

The laws are just written and enforced by authoritarian garbage for the most part. The scum WANT cops and prosecutors to be able to bully accused people into a plea bargain under threat of a life sentence, instead of allowing people to exercise their God given right to a jury trial.

The US is far from a "free country" -- it has an authoritarian and Puritanical streak as wide as the country itself.

Re:116 Years?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know it's not the point of the article... but I feel like the sentencing algorithms have some bugs.

That is the effect of "tough on crime" legislature, as well as a prison system which is entirely about punishment and doesn't care about reform.

These laws exist so moralizing assholes can say "yarg, teh evil man will be in prison forever", while those same people utterly refuse to look at the social causes of crime and fix them.

America's penal system is pathetic. It exists to apply harsh punishment, at great expense and profitability by private corporations, and makes little effort to help people get their lives fixed, and does nothing whatsoever to says "hey, maybe if everyone wasn't poor, under-educated, and had a chance for jobs we might not have these problems".

The sentencing algorithm are exactly as they've been designed. The problems lie in the people who wrote them.

America is deeply fucked, because most everything is defined by either religious idiots, or by rich assholes. Which means facts, and overall benefit and cost to society and not things which factor into the laws.

It it doesn't make a corporation money, or allow some moralizing cunt to feel self righteous, it simply doesn't happen.

Re:116 Years?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like, multiply by 6 if you're black?

Business Records

[Anonymous Coward]

Tower data are just business records, and nobody has an expectation of privacy in business records. Why the courts are wasting their time on something that has been decided 100 times already is beyond me.

Re:Business Records

[b0s0z0ku]

Actually, in civilized countries, there IS an expectation of privacy in business records. The EU actually has data retention limits that require deletion of such data after a specific time period. Location data is also considered personal, not strictly a business record.

If someone used cell location data to (say) stalk a celebrity, would the "business record" argument fly? What's wrong with cops having to ask a judge for a warrant? Why should police be given any more power than they need?

Scary Sceario

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's say you were trapped in your car during a riot and the police grabbed all of the cellular data of everyone suspected of being there who caused millions in damage to local business. How could you convince those in power you were "merely passing through" and not affiliated with the carnage? This tactic is done in other countries and likely has been done here during riots. An innocent person could find themselves in trouble where none is warranted.

Re:Scary Sceario

[b0s0z0ku]

Yep: and many people in that situation will be bullied into pleading guilty to something (say a felony with no jail time and probation), thus sticking them with a criminal record and making their future lives more difficult. The goal of the American injustice system isn't justice. It's appearing "tough on crime" in a mindless fashion that totals the number of cases closed, the number of people convicted (or bullied into pleading guilty). Basically, "doing something", even if that "something" wastes money and wrecks lives.

Re:Scary Sceario

[Anonymous Coward]

How could you convince those in power you were "merely passing through" and not affiliated with the carnage?

Yeah, I see your point. If only they had a device, like a video camera, to record their predicament.

Thanks for the advice!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll be sure to leave my phone somewhere that supports my alibi while I'm committing a crime.

Can I get it? No? Get a damn warrant.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I, as a private citizen, can't legally have access to $PAPERS_AND_EFFECTS, then the government should get a damn warrant to have access to that thing.

Argument Transcripts

[zeugma-amp]

As the oral arguments for this case will be heard Wednesday, you'll be able to download the Argument Transcripts on Wednesday afteroon, or Thursday Morning.

While the questions asked don't necessarily indicate how judges are leaning on the case, as they will sometimes act as devil's advocate, it's still worth checking out as a rough guide to what they think are the important elements are to the case.

World's easiest alibi?

[petes_PoV]

thieves tend to carry their cellphones with them to work. When they use their phones on the job, police find it easier to do their jobs. They can get cellphone tower records that help place suspects in the vicinity of crimes

Or not.

Just give your cellphone to a "friend" and have them make a few calls from somewhere a long way from where you are "working". Alibi established!

Even if it doesn't hold up, it could remove you from the list of "usual suspects" for at least the first phase. And you never know, the cops might stitch up someone else for your crimes. So for the small inconvenience (unless you like taking selfies as you break in) of laying a false trail, you'd have to think that criminals would already be doing this. I suppose that since cell tower data is regularly used, there are many very stupid criminals out there.

Are radio signals not public?

[drnb]

This is not public information

Yes and no. If the location is only record by the cell company, no it is not public. However if law enforcement adds antennas to CCTV and other government equipment, then location may be public. Your cell phone is broadcasting a signal via radio. Law enforcement may be able to passively listen and log, not emulate a cell phone tower, but just listen to broadcast radio signals. The matchmaking signals between equipment, not the conversation between people?

Re:Are radio signals not public?

[bluefoxlucid]

That requires a method for identifying the individuals represented by each signal. The IMEI identifies the phone itself; the IMSI identifies the SIM card. The connection is encrypted, although I'm unclear about whether the IMEI is encrypted.

Listening would be akin to eavesdropping, which is also illegal without a warrant in many jurisdictions. This eavesdropping may not be currently illegal; perhaps it should be. I dislike mass data gathering--what is called domestic spying.

Re:Are radio signals not public?

[drnb]

I'm only referring to the most basic level, that first part of the "handshake" where the phone broadcasts to all "is anyone there?". Last enforcement could listen to that to determine proximity to their various antennas. That signal will be pretty hard to argue as being private. If that is logged and law enforcement arrests a person and has their cell phone they can examine logs to determine where that cell phone has been.

Re:Are radio signals not public?

[bluefoxlucid]

Right, and I'm saying we potentially need to expand eavesdropping laws to prevent that kind of data gathering.

Imagine if they put cameras on all the telephone poles, used face recognition software to track you--moving from frame to frame, they can identify which bodies are the same, and have few individuals to compare, thus high accuracy--and thus had a database of everywhere you've gone. They can track your car, your face, your clothing. They have a full log of every movement you've made.

Would that be something you want the government (or anyone) doing?

Re:Are radio signals not public?

[Obfuscant]

Would that be something you want the government (or anyone) doing?

You can't put toothpaste back into the tube. Don't walk into a major airport, they already do this. Don't walk into any major retailer, they already do this. Don't drive down any major freeway, they already do this. Don't park in any parking lot or space where there is a time limit, they already do this.

You are in plain sight. If you are in plain sight, don't expect privacy laws to protect you from being seen.

Re:Are radio signals not public?

[drnb]

Actually your car is tracked at any time its on any road. Police cars, bail bondsman, car repo, debt collectors, etc have cameras scanning the license plates of all cars they drive near to. The later private individuals will actually cruise up and down the isles at malls, walmart, sport stadiums, etc. They will get hits on people who have warrants or owe money just through luck. They feed this data into a private subscription only database. If someone, public or private, is looking for you they may know some of the common places your car can be found.

"Excemption" from the 4th amendement

[Anonymous Coward]

The exemption of business records from 4th amendment protections has to be one of the bigger end runs around the constitution in the history of our country. Perhaps it made a bit of sense 100 years ago when records covered a much smaller amount of information (mostly receipts, ledgers, etc) but today, as with most things, the government interprets "business records" to be basically anything held by a third party. And in some cases (like telephone records) the government FORCES businesses to keep those records specifically so that they can be forced to hand them over at some point in the future. Either the government needs to utilize a more sensible definition of business records or the whole exemption needs to be trashed.

Re:"Excemption" from the 4th amendement

[PPH]

I remember when call records were the property of the calling/called parties. Not the phone company. There was a statement in the customer agreement to the effect that the telephone company would access these records for the purpose of billing and resolving technical problems. Otherwise, they had a fiduciary duty to protect it on my behalf. I think this changed around 1996 with some fine print in a telecom bill. Now they are the property of the phone company. And the phone company doesn't really give a shit about my privacy.

Lets put the law back the way it was. Or, if these records are property of the phone company and they are willing to sell them, then I and my friends at various foreign intelligence agencies should be free to buy them*. Including the call records of US NOC agents and the dummy businesses they contact. With a bit of link analysis, foreign intelligence can unravel the structure of many of our covert operations.

*Oh yeah. They already sell this info to whoever will pay.

Your Slashdot Nick

[Anonymous Coward]

Many years ago, when I was stationed in Japan in the military, I had a Japanese girlfriend whose brother was part of a local bosozoku tribe. We used to hang out at night down along the docks and watch him and others race motorcycles and cars. Not before or since have I seen anything cooler than a 1971 Nissan Skyline tricked out that could do the quarter with such finesse.

The car looked something like this: 1971 Nissan Skyline

He probably gambled and lost

[rsilvergun]

after decades of "Tough on Crime" laws just about anything more serious than jaywalking will put you away for at least 50. Most folks plea bargain. The crazy long sentences give prosecutors incredible leverage (nevermind the fact that their resources are virtually unlimited while the defense gets about 2 hours a case). He probably took it to court thinking their evidence was flimsy, but jury trials mean justice is more a popularity contest than anything about logic and reason.

Our entire system is designed to hurt people, and lots of voters want it that way. Those voters aren't sadists. They're worse. They're a combination of frightened people and folks who, having seen hard times in life, see no reason why anyone else should get a break. Most folks know a sadist is bad news, but it's just as hard to reason with people who are frightened and angry.

Re:He probably gambled and lost

[Anonymous Coward]

NPR's Planet Money did an episode of their podcast on this story. Episode 804: Your Cell Phone's A Snitch.

In this case the police started with one one of the robbers and going on from there. He had names and cell phone numbers. The police built their case based on using the data for the cell number of the ring leader.

Locally a man fell down a drain.

[zaax]

He had his phone on him (used it) and the rescue services quickly found him, as the cell towers tri-angulated on the signal.

Re:Locally a man fell down a drain.

[The MAZZTer]

Utilizing someone's location when they request you to do so is a lot different than utilizing someone's location without telling them to their detriment, or your benefit.

Re:Locally a man fell down a drain.

[Anonymous Coward]

He had his phone on him (used it) and the rescue services quickly found him, as the cell towers tri-angulated on the signal.

that's an argument for triangulation-as-a-service not spy-on-me-and-give-my-info-to-the-coppers..

The real scum...

[b0s0z0ku]

are the media pimps and lobbyists who make money on people remaining afraid, despite crime being at a 50 year low, and the US generally being a safe country.

Though I'm not going to excuse the American voters just because they're "frightened," either.

Scary.

[Anonymous Coward]

They can get cellphone tower records that help place suspects in the vicinity of crimes, and they do so thousands of times a year.

Frightening, considering the accuracy of such things is massively overestimated. But then again, people still place way too much faith in incredibly fallible human memory and perception.

Swichies Anyone?

[JimSadler]

Foul owls tend to know their own kind and they are bright enough to have friends carry their cell phones to destinations that will confuse and misdirect those trying to follow them from cell tower reports. In other words those same records could be used as a false proof that a bad guy did not commit a crime. In a way it is a form of discrimination against the ignorant as those who are stupid go to prison while those with a bit better intelligence or education use a law enforcement tool to establish false innocence.

Logic

[sjbe]

Which is why the police don't need a warrant - you ALREADY AGREED TO SHARE THAT INFORMATION.

I disagree.

Police need a warrant to wiretap a land line. I see no logical difference in what our civil rights should be required of them merely because the signal is carried over radio waves. These days the phone will be tapped at the central office anyway so it's not like they have to do something differently. If they have reasonable grounds to suspect someone of a crime then it shouldn't be hard to get a warrant.

Re:Logic

[Obfuscant]

Police need a warrant to wiretap a land line. I see no logical difference in what our civil rights should be required of them merely because the signal is carried over radio waves.

If this were an analog cell call that can be easily received by radios and TVs, using the public airwaves, then why should anyone need a warrant to listen? You choose to transmit a radio signal in my airspace, I should get to listen to it.

But that's not the issue here. The issue is location data, which is not transmitted by radio, even though radio is involved. Is this different than the police knowing the phone number of a landline caller and using a simple reverse directory to find the address? No, not really.

This is not a phone tap.

Re:Logic

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why the police don't need a warrant - you ALREADY AGREED TO SHARE THAT INFORMATION.

I disagree.

Police need a warrant to wiretap a land line. I see no logical difference in what our civil rights should be required of them merely because the signal is carried over radio waves. These days the phone will be tapped at the central office anyway so it's not like they have to do something differently. If they have reasonable grounds to suspect someone of a crime then it shouldn't be hard to get a warrant.

There's a huge logical difference - the content of your call is private.

The fact you called, and the number you called, are not. Police have no need for a warrant to get a pen register on your phone:

In Katz v. United States (1967), the United States Supreme Court established its "reasonable expectation of privacy" test. It overturned Olmstead v. United States (1928) and held that warrantless wiretaps were unconstitutional searches, because there was a reasonable expectation that the communication would be private. From then on, the government was required to get a warrant to execute a wiretap.

Ten years later the Supreme Court held that a pen register is not a search because the "petitioner voluntarily conveyed numerical information to the telephone company."

Just like you voluntarily agreed to share your location with the cell phone company. Hell, your cell phone won't even work if the cell phone company doesn't know where it is.

Re:Logic

[Anonymous Coward]

"If this were an analog cell call that can be easily received by radios and TVs, using the public airwaves, then why should anyone need a warrant to listen? You choose to transmit a radio signal in my airspace, I should get to listen to it. "

The courts have thrown out that justification when people used it to descarmble signals they picked up out of the air

Re:Logic

[Obfuscant]

The courts have thrown out that justification when people used it to descarmble signals they picked up out of the air

"Descarmble" [sic] is not what I was talking about. Analog cell calls were not scarmbled, they were in the clear, and could be picked up by TVs of the day.

And the courts have never been wrong. Of course.

Re:Logic

[Anonymous Coward]

This IS different from using a reverse directory. You, as a private citizen, can also use a reverse directory to find an address. I used to do it all the time back when I had access to a reverse directory. However, you and I do NOT have the ability to call up the phone company and ask for location data for an arbitrary phone number. The phone company will refuse, and rightly so.

If a warrant isn't required, then the phone company becomes just a component of a surveillance state. In that case, eventually they'll be paid by the state to do this stuff (they are in some cases when they can demonstrate a significant burden in meeting these requests, but not always). They will end up having the same ethics as a paid informant: meaning, no ethics at all, where your rights are concerned.

Re:Logic

[shentino]

Actually, while you personally might not have the right to demand a search warrant, the telco however should.

Data hosted on someone else's server doesn't automatically mean they don't need a search warrant. In theory, the telco could still demand one before spilling anything.

And a side note, most phone calls sent to and from towers are encrypted precisely to prevent snooping by wardriving eavesdroppers, so they are also not public in the first place.

Re:Logic

[Obfuscant]

Actually, while you personally might not have the right to demand a search warrant, the telco however should.

The court cast in question has nothing to do with whether the telco can demand a search warrant. The question is whether the telco MUST demand a search warrant. The claim is that the information is unusable for the criminal prosecution because the police did not get a warrant, they just asked and were given the data.

And a side note, most phone calls sent to and from towers are encrypted precisely to prevent snooping by wardriving eavesdroppers, so they are also not public in the first place.

The issue is not the content of the encrypted call. It's the location data, which is not sent to and from cell towers to start with.

Re:Logic

[shentino]

By demand, I mean that the telco tells the cops "you can rifle through my database over my dead body if you don't have a search warrant", meaning the telco demanding the search warrant from the police before allowing access to their data.

Re:Logic

[Obfuscant]

By demand, I mean that the telco tells the cops "you can rifle through my database over my dead body if you don't have a search warrant",

I know what "demand" means, thank you. This case is not about the ability of the telco to demand a warrant, it is about whether they MUST demand one. Are the cops required to get a warrant before they can get the data, or is a simple request enough?

Re:Logic

[shentino]

In that case legally it is probably up to the discretion of the telco in question. At least, it should be.

If it is, then the free market can decide if our privacy is worth enough for telcos to stand up to greedy cops that want to go fishing without having a warrant for a hook and line, and the telco has the luxury of choosing between rolling over to pressure or growing a pair and telling the feds to take a hike if they don't have a warrant.

if it is not, then we have a fucked up set of laws that blatantly disrespects the constitutional rights of the telco, and quite frankly, this also applies to the on site manager responsible for the equipment in question.

And I really do not like the idea in general of the government getting to use a combination of "not the customer's data" and "the telco is not a legal person" to do an end-run around the customer's privacy.

Apples to oranges

[sjbe]

It is like getting the video from the liquor store cameras to ID the bastard that just robbed it. It is exactly the same thing, information about your whereabouts from a third party. No warrant needed.

They are not the same thing. If a liquor store gets robbed THEY are the ones calling the cops and they are the one providing the tape. First party. The phone company isn't the one calling the cops so they are a third party. Can you not see the difference? Police can go and ask but the phone company should be under no obligation to comply without a warrant. Likewise if they suspect that a liquor store might have footage of the guy who robbed some other store nearby the police can ask but the liquor store should be under no obligation to cooperate unless served a warrant.

And if you think that only the Cell companies are tracking your every move, you're very mistaken.

True but irrelevant. Just because there are other datapoints about your location does not mean anything in this particular circumstance. My legal right to privacy doesn't change just because someone is nosy.

Re:Apples to oranges

[Obfuscant]

Police can go and ask but the phone company should be under no obligation to comply without a warrant.

That's significantly different than the claim that the police MUST have a warrant just to ask. Can you not see the difference? The issue is not if the phone company was under an obligation to comply, it is about the cops asking and the company complying.

My legal right to privacy doesn't change just because someone is nosy.

But it does change when you voluntarily carry a device that someone else can use to track you. "I am carrying a device that responds to regular pings from a fixed land-based radio system that has the ability to triangulate where I am" is a significant statement here. Given the simplicity of preventing that tracking ...

Re:Apples to oranges

[Dread_ed]

Yeah, well this liquor store uses a security monitoring company and they store the video off site. Now we're right back where we started. You still haven't made the logic work.

In fact, to make the analogy more accurate, we would have to stipulate that the thief could only commit robberies when there were at least three corporate owned cameras focused on him in public. Trying to claim the identity and location of the thief is private information now seems pretty goddamned silly, yes?

Look, its not about someone being nosy. It is about you. You voluntarily bought and use a device that screams "HERE I AM!" all the time. Don't be surprised when that information is easily available to law enforcement.

Expecting spike in sales of "iPad Micro"

[blindseer]

Define a cell phone? This is a serious question.

Imagine a city that has created a metro wide WiFi network for all the poor poor people in the city to read books, get the weather, and take college courses from home. Now imagine this same city is arresting drug dealers, pick pockets, and petty criminals based on their cell phone location data. A cell phone is required to have accurate location data for 911 service. Removing the SIM card will still allow a phone to call 911 and get it's location. Presumably someone that tries to remove a personal connection between a phone and the person that carries it will be difficult so long as the phone is functional.

So, the petty criminals of the city learn that a "iPad Micro" or other pocket sized computing device will let them send and receive messages, even make phone calls with the right kind of software, but they don't have the hardware to do GPS. These drug dealers know to buy these devices with cash, or second hand, so there is no record to connect the person and the device.

What if the city tracks MAC addresses? Then the petty criminals find ways to randomize that. Then search the device for identifying data? The criminals put data self destruct timeouts on the device, if they don't punch in the passcode every hour or so the device is wiped clean.

I will say that the tracking of cell phones is not just a problem in law that can be fixed in the courts and legislatures. This is a problem with technology which can be fixed with technology. I expect people to get devices that allow themselves to communicate but the government will not be able to track so easily. They can pass laws on things like identifying data for the purchase, or that the manufacturers cannot have useful encryption, or whatever the legislators might think up next. This is something that cannot be fixed by banning things, when the law bans untraceable cell phones then only the criminals will have untraceable cell phones.

(Yes, I know an "iPad Micro" is effectively an iPod Touch. Kids these days don't seem to even know what an iPod is any more, but they know that an iPad is a tablet computer. It seems that any tablet computer is called an iPad even if it's not made by Apple.)

Re:Expecting spike in sales of "iPad Micro"

[Actually, I do RTFA]

The average criminal isn't going to do that. Frankly, if they were as smart as you say, they would just leave the cell phone at home while committing crimes.

Re:Expecting spike in sales of "iPad Micro"

[blindseer]

Imagine a drug dealer getting caught for selling drugs. In the case the cell phone records are used in the conviction. This drug dealer goes to prison and while there runs into someone that's smart enough to hide his tracks well but caused enough trouble that significant resources were used to catch him. This white collar criminal is now teaching the drug dealer in prison how to not get caught again by not carrying a cell phone but instead using a different device to communicate.

Sure, they can leave their phone at home but that means less business selling drugs since the people they sell to can't communicate as easily.

This drug dealer is successful not being caught again and others want to know why. He gets his friends hooked up on this idea. This drug dealer may not know how it works, only that it does. In this game of "telephone" the rules on how to not get caught will be broken and people will by a process of elimination learn what works and what does not.

What happens is they learn to use an "iPad Micro" and a certain set of software to not get caught. Again, these people may not have the mental capacity to understand how it works but enough capacity to follow the recipe laid out by someone smart enough to figure it out in the first place.

What can happen is a cultural shift, where people want to have live some elements of this drug dealer lifestyle and so the use of these devices and software becomes the norm. The dealers and buyers use this stuff to not get caught, but the friends of these people use this because it's "cool" to do so.

These kinds of shifts happen relatively quickly. I have a suspicion that this kind of shift is already in place, that some drug dealer somewhere figured out how to use a cellphone like device, such as an iPod Touch, to keep in touch with his clients but there's no cellphone network tracking him.

People?

[b0s0z0ku]

You mean scum who couldn't find an honest way of making a living, so they managed to con their way into Con-gress?

Expectation of privacy

[WayToGoPhil]

The default should always be I have an expectation of privacy and a warrant needed regardless. My digital history should not be a carved out exception. This involves metadata too. Yes it would require more work on the cops. Yes I want to see bad guys captured and punished accordingly but it should not be done at the expense of civil liberties. As for the sentence, this throw everyone in jail for 100s of years as the be all end all solution for everything has to stop. How many defendants could serve out their sentences doing community service or public service in general instead of in jail.

It's called concealed carry

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm too old now to fight with people. I don't go to bars or other places where fights could happen, but were I to be accosted on the street or in a parking garage, I have a choice of three things I never leave home without. Texas has gotten weird and there are a lot of meth head goobers running around.

- Fox Pepper Spray (4 million scoville heat units, really nasty stuff). Used it once on guy threatening me who was likely on meth. Guy went down like he was unplugged.
- 4" assisted folder
- .357 magnum snubby stoked with 158 grain SJHP (The original one-hitter quitter). Last resort. Never had to produce it, pray this remains the case.

Altered?

[Anonymous Coward]

"... technology has altered privacy concerns."

No, technology has not altered privacy concerns. We still expect privacy and the Fourth Amendment has not changed.

Just because there are ways for law enforcement to cheat does not mean they get to. Law enforcement can go do the necessary real work and do it in a way that respects individuals.

Worse than Triangulation

[Anonymous Coward]

What's worse is that Feds have created watchlists that accumulate your data into a dossier and private companies are giving it to them freely.. because courts ruled data obtained by a company is their information and has no expectation of privacy... Hotels even give out their guest list in real-time...

we're sunk...

mandate warrants

[Jodka]

Of course warrants should be mandated. Without monitoring and checks, the victims of police have little or no protection or legal recourse. To prevent abuse the police should be monitored and checked constantly in every way feasible while on the job. Here are just a few of the recent examples of police corruption and abuse.

- In Denver, the police are stealing cars.

- In New York, police handcuffed and raped a teenager. Then over a dozen other cops threatened the victim to prevent her from reporting the crime.

- Police steal more than criminals.

- In Utah a cop who assaulted and arrested a nurse for objecting to his inappropriate demands to draw blood from a suspect.

- In Los Angeles a cop was caught by his own body cam planting drugs on a suspect.

 

Re:mandate warrants

[Anonymous Coward]

At least there's justice sometimes...

The cop in Utah is out of both jobs that he had. Hopefully, he'll lose his home soon after being unable to pay his mortgage, and be found frozen to death under a bridge one fine winter's morning.

Looks like the NYPD cops are being charged. Hope someone shivs them in the scrote in jail, they contract MRSA, and they have to amputate.

Re:mandate warrants

[blindseer]

Your examples of police stealing were cases of civil forfeiture, the police didn't technically steal. That was civil forfeiture and monitoring the police would not prevent this. This had to go through a lot of hands before it got to where people lost their stuff to the government. To stop that means repealing the law or getting people in office that use that law as a means of preventing and punishing crime, not being petty little tyrants.

I'm not defending civil forfeiture, far from it. Maybe the legislators had the right intentions but it is a bad law and needs to go completely, or perhaps redone so it's much more difficult to abuse. I'm just saying that this is not something that can be repaired with more oversight, the laws that allow this are simply broken.

Re:mandate warrants

[Anonymous Coward]

GTFO with that bullshit. You routinely use the taxation is theft meme on here so fuck right off. The cops are stealing. Full Stop.

All searches recorded

[tdelaney]

I don't think there should be a high bar for being able to search mobile tower records, but there should be a bar.

Specifically, I think any search must first be lodged with the judiciary with full details as to the scope of and reason for the search. And telephony providers should have full audit trails of what searches were performed so it can be verified that the searches complied with the scope.

Tracking for Dummies

[QuadEddie]

I say let cops use that data in court. It will only hurt the privacy of stupid criminals like this black guy they mentioned in the article. The smart criminals will understand they use this data and send their phone elsewhere to form an alibi. The logic has to work both ways and as soon as cops start getting gamed, they'll rely less on this tactic.

The ruling needs to address all location tracking

[schwit1]

The case centers around a person's cellphone tower location logs, but the broader issue is the government's access to tracking data no matter its collection process. These days location data comes from many sources including facial recognition, license plate readers and smart tags. In the future it will probably include drones and driverless vehicles.

The ruling needs to say that a warrant is required for the government to access location data, no matter who or how it was collected.

As long as the companies aren't forced

[bongey]

This is no different than asking people at a scene of crime, "hey who did you see around here, a crime was committed?". Verizon, T-Mobile etc are just witnesses .

Note Stringray devices are a different story.

Education

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I don't get it. Don't your crime schools instruct your thievery students to leave their phone at home or at least remove the battery before leaving the house?

Terrible side consequences

[Anonymous Coward]

My father - in - law was an insurance adjuster. This put him in the worst part of town as some of the worst times of day.
What happens when his cell phone number shows up on a tower near several crimes, while his home is a long ways from there?
Do the cops roust him on a regular basis?
What if a case has him close to an Ex-girlfriend, that his wife wants him to stay clear of?
The Cops come to the house and ask the wife what he might be doing down there.
Now life is miserable for somebody doing their job, while the cops are looking for an easy way to do theirs.

Wisdom follows, pay attention!

[Anonymous Coward]

> thieves tend to carry their cellphones with them to work ... Timothy Carpenter. He is serving a 116-year sentence after a jury convicted him of armed robberies...

The first and foremost right, the parent of all other rights is the sanctity of private property. In a place without safe private property, like communism, there is also no right to live, evidenced by the terror rule of Stalin and Mao that killed multiple tens of millions of people. That's why G-d commanded it twice: Thou shall not steal! and Thou shall not covet anything that belongs to thy neigbour!

Thus those thieves and robbers, who are violators of the divinely ordered sanctity of private property, have no rights whatsoever man-made or natural. In fact murder is simply robbery committed against the victim's privately owned life. Every wrong in ths world stems from theft as Adam and Eve stole the apple, reaping death in punishment.

Therefore, let's chop off the thief's hand and tell them to climb the cell tower in protest if they still can... Warrant less righteous more we are.

Automated speeding tickets

[Anonymous Coward]

If your phone got between 2 cell towers faster than the speed limit, obviously someone has committed a crime.

The point of the warrant

[BankRobberMBA]

A lot of what you say I cannot argue with. I have little enough patience for stupid criminals.

I would differentiate the State from the citizens, though. I don't feel threatened by a service provider who voluntarily gives out location information in exigent circumstances. I do feel threatened by agents of the state who have the ability to fish through this data. The fact that I can't articulate specific ways they might harm me does not lessen my fear of them. I don't mind if my neighbor follows me back and forth to work every day. Cops doing that would be a problem.

Beyond that, as far as it being a rubber stamp, that warrant document follows the defendant through the indictment into court and all the way through the appeals process. When the cops treat it as a joke, appellate relief becomes much more likely.

Unsympathetic defendant

[BankRobberMBA]

Sadly, we get a lot of bad case law because of unsympathetic defendants.

Nice!

[BankRobberMBA]

Thank you.

Convicted felon, here

[BankRobberMBA]

In the Federal system there are two sources of sentencing numbers, statutes and guidelines. Statutes are laws promulgated by Congress, this is where almost all of the mandatory minimums come from. The sentencing guidelines are a point-based system following a table promulgated by the United States Sentencing commission (USSC).

Statutes tend to have sharply rising slopes. My first 924C* charge carried a mandatory minimum of 5 years. The second one had a mandatory minimum of 25 years. 30 years on the table before we even talk about the banks. Dang.

The guidelines have sharply declining slopes. You get assigned an offense level for the most severe of your crimes (mine was 23), and then it just goes up by one for each additional charge on the indictment (I wound up at 27). This is the row number on the table. They go across the table to the column that best describes your criminal history, there's your sentencing range.

They almost always have to stay within the statute, and they try to stay within the guideline as much as they can. It's a compromise. Most of the sentences I saw reflected a declining slope.

* - 924C: Possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime of violence.

on-call 24/7

[n329619]

Many people assume that getting a warrant is an undue burden. Most jurisdictions have judge's secretary available or on-call 24/7, and a judge assistant can review and issue a warrant in a few minutes if it is clearly justified.Meanwhile, the actual judge on paid vacation.

fix it for accuracy.

My Advice if caught by these people

[Anonymous Coward]

1. demand a trial. pick jurors who are "jury nullification" aware.
(shouldn't we make a secret blink or something? hmmm)

2. Failing nullification, say your name is ALFA JOLLAH.
(you will note there's no mugshot and you'll get out with an ankle bracelet even though you are in a SHOOTOUT with DC police. -- this isn't no bs. on the other hand you just handed your life over to the current RAT-LINE masters)

3. Failing impersonating Alfa Jollah, your going to have to screw JTTF for pinging your phone. demand discovery. the case folds right there. Oath breaking scum need to be hanged for god damned TREASON.

You are a suspect.

[Anonymous Coward]

Were you anywhere near a crime? Then you're a suspect, Bud. We know that from the tower records. (No, not Tower Records.) We're calling you in for questioning, and you better have a good reason why you were there. We can hold you 72 hours without a charge. Also, does your wife know you were there? How about your boss, who thought you were working?