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

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:"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.