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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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
I stole this Sig
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"?
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
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.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Rantoul, you'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy in Illinois. (except maybe Springfield).
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
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?
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.
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.
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.
This is an ex-parrot!
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.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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He had his phone on him (used it) and the rescue services quickly found him, as the cell towers tri-angulated on the signal.
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.
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.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
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.
You misspelled "privileges"....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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.
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.
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.)
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
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.
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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?
You mean scum who couldn't find an honest way of making a living, so they managed to con their way into Con-gress?
You can get a warrant for a wandering dementia patient. Look up the Silver Alert.
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.
Have gnu, will travel.
" 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.
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.
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.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
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.
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?
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.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
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.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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"?
They didn't release any information about you. They released information about their towers.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
That didn't work for pots lines why should it work cell phones?
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.
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.
Sadly, we get a lot of bad case law because of unsympathetic defendants.
Thank you.
"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.
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.
Your medical records are created by your doctor, so clearly they belong to him and he can hand them out without a warrant, right?
Popular people don't need human rights, they have friends to protect them. Defending human rights therefore always involves protecting the worst people.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A one-armed robber?
Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis