Police Don't Need a Warrant To Track Your Disposable Cellphone 312
New submitter Blindman writes "The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has held that it is okay for police to track your cellphone signal without a warrant. Using information about the cell tower that a prepaid cell phone was connected to, the police were able to track a suspected drug smuggler. Apparently, keeping your cellphone on is authorization for the police to know where you are. According to the ruling (PDF), '[The defendant] did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the data emanating from his cell phone that showed its location.' Also, 'if a tool used to transport contraband gives off a signal that can be tracked for location, certainly the police can track the signal.'"
So it begins (Score:2, Redundant)
The first step in mass surveillance.
Re:So it begins (Score:5, Insightful)
The first?
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Yeah they've been surveilling us for years.
And what do you expect? If you're driving down the highway and light is bouncing off your car, are police supposed to shut their eyes and stop intercepting the signal (thus letting you get away)? Whether the EM waves you are emitting are visible or not makes no difference.
Re:So it begins (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether the EM waves you are emitting are visible or not makes no difference.
Yes it does. What if a device is invented that can detect the minute changes in gravity that occur when an object moves about. Lets assume that by using this device the police could reconstruct a 3d rendering of an entire city include all the people in it and what they are doing. Does that sound like a good idea?
Whether your cellphone signal can be tracked without a warrant is not a technical issue. It's a philosophical, moral, societal, political and legal question.
Re:So it begins (Score:4)
So it ends (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So it ends (Score:5, Insightful)
Worst part is, I can already see how the government might address the issue ... Cell phone (and other hardware) manufacturers will be required to include a sticker on the packaging, or maybe just a footnote in the instruction manual that states : "This device complies with FCC regulation 42.x and emits location tracking data that can be collected and used by law enforcement. Ownership of this device implies acceptance of government tracking and anal probing in compliance with .... " etc etc etc
In fact, it might already be there. I sure as hell haven't read all my fine print.
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So leave your phone at home.
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If I walk down a street, anyone within a block or two can see me, and we all agree there was no right to privacy... after all I went out in public.
But you put a transmitter in your pocket that broadcasts your location to everyone within 45 miles.. and suddenly you're shocked other people know where you are?
You've got to be kidding me.
It's your phone. It's your transmitter.
STOP transmitting your location to the whole city if you don't want people to know where you are.
Re:So it ends (Score:5, Insightful)
Use of radio (or other shared infrastructure) is not equivalent to broadcasting. Cell phone communications are, by law, only allowed between the service provider tower and the subscriber handset and a nontrivial effort is taken to secure that unicast communication against eavesdropping.
Re:So it ends (Score:5, Insightful)
It does NOT broadcast your location to everyone within 45 miles. GSM, for example, encrypts the signal [hackcanada.com]. Details about whom the signal belongs to and what it contains are between the subscriber and the service.
What this ruling is about isn't "other people", it is the State conducting a surreptitious search without a warrant. The nature of the radio transmission and the encryption give me a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Re:So it ends (Score:5, Insightful)
"Also, 'if a tool used to transport contraband gives off a signal that can be tracked for location, certainly the police can track the signal.'"
This ruling pre-supposes that contraband is being transported. In fact there is no way to know that for sure until AFTER an arrest. So this is a completely specious argument.
It would be like him ruling that police can look in the trunk of your car anytime they want, because you "might be" transporting drugs or something. It's a completely bogus argument.
Re:So it ends (Score:4, Insightful)
No, because I shouldn't have to turn off my right to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness and/or property.
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So get rid of the cel phone if it bothers you that much. You know damn good and well SOMEBODY is going to track that location data, legally or not.
No? Then it doesn't bother you that much.
Don't act based on how things should be. Act based on how they are.
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"First they came for my neighbor, then they came for you, when they came for me there was no one left to speak up."
You're not interesting enough... (Score:3)
...until you are.
And by "interesting enough," I mean
etc.
See what I did there?
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Really, and you seem to think privacy is not associated with life, liberty, happiness?
How about I release your credit card numbers? your SSN?
Make public personal information?
You think that does not affect your life, your freedom, nor your happiness?
I think your crazy if you think not.
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Really, and you seem to think privacy is not associated with life, liberty, happiness?
How about I release your credit card numbers? your SSN?
Make public personal information?
You think that does not affect your life, your freedom, nor your happiness?
I think your crazy if you think not.
to be fair your SSN is only 9 digits long, and only contains only numbers. overall, it's not very secure.
Re:So it ends (Score:5, Interesting)
So you're saying you advocate security through obscurity, rather than making the systems that use that information more secure by design such that I could publish those things and not worry?
More like, "That's nifty technology. Why can't you be bothered to get a warrant to use it for law enforcement purposes?"
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Yours is an argument from fallacy, and not a very good one. The preaching of "If you have nothing to hide why can't the Government (or anyone else) know everything you do/own/have/etc... about you at all times" has obviously paid off. It helps that the majority of people today are very ignorant to the arts of rhetoric and fallacy.
Re:So it ends (Score:5, Insightful)
On the contrary, I'm in favor of requiring the warrant for this. I'm saying the argument that privacy is necessary because there is currently danger in the release of SSN, CC#, and so on is security through obscurity. That's not a good argument for needing to retain privacy.
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My apologies for misunderstanding your position, and my thanks for additional points as your position is a bit more clear.
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Clarify my argument. It wasn't that privacy is necessary for cause of SSN, and security through obscurity.
My point was that privacy, while not explicity stated in the Constitution as a right/privilege, does in fact relate to the well being of the individual. And violations of privacy can in fact cause harm to an individual. And as such, there is justification to legal protect privacy.
Re:So it ends (Score:4, Insightful)
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Do you have any idea what the term "Liberty" means in the Constitution? The term was intentionally chosen because it deals with several items, one of which is privacy.
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"It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law, than that he should escape." --Thomas Jefferson to W. Carmichael, 1788.
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The sad thing is that we have lost a lot of them to "aid in fighting" un-winnable and/or lost wars.
Of course we won the Iraq war. We got rid of their WMD, didn't we? 'Mission Accomplished.'
Except Iraq didn't have any WMDs or they would have used them the instant we invaded. How many months did El Presidente stand in front of a camera saying "You've always lied to us. Even when you're lying, you're lying to us. We're coming to your town to get you. Your government will be destroyed, as will your way of life. We intend to kill you." With absolutely nothing to lose, and El Presidente made that damned clear in every broadcast, why not try to take a few infidels with you when you're gonna d
Re:So it begins (Score:5, Insightful)
stallman is crazy, in some ways; but he was RIGHT that we are carrying 'involuntary tracking devices'. and we even PAY for them, out of our own pockets!
its not really 'tinfoil', anymore, to want to remove your battery when the phone is not in use. (not sure what apple fans to, but normal phones can at least have their battery taken out easily and on-demand).
Re:So it begins (Score:4, Informative)
They turn off the phone? Or just switch it to "Airplane Mode"?
And please don't say 'but it could still be transmitting!' We have these amazing gizmos called 'antennas' that can—I am told—detect radio transmissions. Transmitting also takes power. If smartphones really kept transmitting while off or in air mode, (a) the battery would drain relatively quickly even when the phone is off, (b) some paranoiac with a microwave receiver would have already discovered the unauthorized transmissions, and (c) the FAA (among other groups) would be all over the manufacturer.
Oh, but I forget: TV provides irrefutable evidence 'they' can track phones which are turned off; at least, when 'they' are not too busy uncropping photos and tracking your IP with a GUI interface made in Visual Basic.
Re:So it begins (Score:4, Funny)
(not sure what apple fans to, but normal phones can at least have their battery taken out easily and on-demand).
Apple is actually leading the way in this regard. Some people say this is wrong, but I hear that you get the same effect simply by holding the phone a certain way...
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The sad thing is, this is actually pretty consistent with how the courts have worked for a long, long time now. (IANAL, grain of salt, etc.):
There are essentially two arguments here. First, the cellphone pings off of cell towers to identify nearby towers with best service for hand off. Even if this process wasn't wireless, your agent (the phone) would be actively attempting to engage the agent of a publicly-available private service (the tower). This is similar to how it may (and has) been argued that you h
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If only my device drivers were as reliable as the ones they routinely subvert on CSI:Sacramento! Hell, I can't get a video feed out of my TV tuner card half the time, and the web cam only works on its own schedule, not mine. And audio drivers? Forget about it!
So good luck, spooks. If I wake up tomorrow and all those systems start to work, I know who to thank.
Must have been small time... (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at it this way... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Well, if the goal of privacy law is to preserve people's expectations, then the two cases are different. People yelling expect to be heard. Non-technical people with a cell phone don't expect to be tracked like a bear with a radio collar.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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You're going around shouting at different people and then the police ask these people where they think the noise was coming from. There's not asking what was being yelled, just which direction the noise is coming from. I can see this falling into the range of non-private data, as much as I would like to say it's not.
But that location data resides on third party servers - it's not shouted where all can hear it in a manner that humans could hear such as by voice. It's reasonable to expect that your personal data stored on such a server would require a warrant.
To keep with my analogy, the person who heard you and is being queried by the police as to your location can refuse without a warent. But in this case, the cell phone providers seem eager to hand over the information. Put another way, once you hand over your information to a third party without a contract protecting your privacy, they can hand it off to the police without your permission or a warent if they so choose. Thats why this decision applies to disposable phones and not regular ones.
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Thats why this decision applies to disposable phones and not regular ones.
Right, because as we all know, cellular carriers are well known for their respecting user privacy in the face of illegitimate requests from law enforcement... /sarc
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Nice loophole, huh? The police don't even have to worry about that "privacy" nonsense anymore; they can just get private companies to reveal everything about you. Nothing to hide, nothing to fear.
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its the MO of the large governments in the US, for a few decades now. didn't you know that?
instead of THEM doing the dirty work, they outsource it. "hey, WE didn't break the law".
in a weird sociopathic way, they justify their incroachment of our liberties. "the end justifies the means" and all that.
not much new. just normal 'progress' toward state control over its serfs. seriously, nothing new; just some new awareness of how bold they are in their trampling of our rights.
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The article does not say that explicitly- I don't really know much about cell protocols but there may be a way to do it just by looking at the signals.
Writs of Assistance (Score:5, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writ_of_assistance [wikipedia.org]
Idk, but between border control, the patriot act, and the drug wars, it seems to me that e have a whole lotta writs of assistance in this here "free" country.
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you are correct.
and how they do this is via 'boiling the frog' by slow cooking.
little by little, we are having our freedom stolen from us.
truly stolen, too; since its being taken by those with guns against our will. I call that theft. don't you??
Reality... (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't get this persistent desire of people to ignore reality. If something can be done, it will be. Should it be? Possibly not, but again you are ignoring the REALITY.
Can someone track your cell phone when it is on? Yes. Therefore it will be done. If that bothers you, turn it off if you are going somewhere you do not want to be found, or burn phones more often...
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Exactly (Score:2)
"Can a SWAT team kick in your door in the middle of the night? Yes. Therefore it will be done. Stop complaining about the reality."
That is exactly right. If you don't want it to be so, start thinking about disbanding SWAT teams or not allowing them to do B&E at all.
Why are people assembling basically military police teams and then astonished when they act like military teams?
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I don't get this persistent desire of people to ignore reality. If something can be done, it will be. Should it be? Possibly not, but again you are ignoring the REALITY.
Congratulations, you have just argued away the need for the government get a warrant in any situation at all.
You mistake every case for possible cases (Score:2)
Congratulations, you have just argued away the need for the government get a warrant in any situation at all.
All I am saying is that people should be less surprised than they are when things that are obviously quite possible happen.
Again, as I stated it's not necessarily what SHOULD happen. But when you arrange systems to make something possible and easy, then try to layer controls on and prevent it - well don't be too surprised when the layers of controls fail at times.
Again to bring this back on topic,
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People ARE murdered every day. Does this surprise you?
If you do not like to be murdered, takes steps to reduce the possibility. Go out less, arm yourself, whatever.
But it's not about YOU, it's about the average...
Disposable phones (Score:2)
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From TFA: (Score:5, Insightful)
Emphasis mine; let's apply that "logic" to other "voluntary" purchases, and see if it passes the smell test...
there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in the voluntary use of a voluntarily bought house
there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in the voluntary use of a voluntarily bought automobile
there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in the voluntary use of a voluntarily bought pair of pants
Yup, smells like bullshit to me.
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well yes it's bullshit, but it was spouted by some guy named Nick Selby... it's not what the judge said.
The judge compared it to police finding a suspect's location by using a dog to track his scent, which they are allowed to do.
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well yes it's bullshit, but it was spouted by some guy named Nick Selby... it's not what the judge said.
The judge compared it to police finding a suspect's location by using a dog to track his scent, which they are allowed to do.
Here is the explanation the judge gave regarding tracking with dogs:
Unless being suspected of a crime now equates to conviction + escape from custody, that little anecdote is utter bullshit.
I would say I'm shocked that a judge would exhibit such a blatantly wrong understanding of the law, but these days, I would find it more surprising if he didn't.
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I'm pretty sure the police can track your location while you're using your house. They don't even need a warrant.
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Sounds reasonable. (Score:2)
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It's a radio transmitter, dammit! When you walk around with an operating radio transmitter spraying rf in all directions the people it is bouncing off of have a right to absorb some of it and do with it as they wish. That includes the cops. If you want no one to know where you are don't broadcast your location.
Since when is it legal for anyone to do with it as they wish with private communications between individuals? If I decode the signal from your phone I can do whatever I want with it? Really?
This is not even true for unlicensed and ameature frequencies. You do not even have the right to do whatever the hell you want with the contents of conversation between two parties you overhear even if that conversation is "in the clear".
Living (Score:2)
Living, is justification for monitoring, detention, seizure of assets. If you refuse to accept this, you have the right to cease living. .gov
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And sadly we tolerate it, because what else are we going to do. Most Americans were sadly to stupid to vote for Ron Paul.
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Not in Japan...
Hmm... (Score:3)
'if a tool used to transport contraband gives off a signal that can be tracked for location, certainly the police can track the signal.'
So, anything made of reasonably ordinary matter at a temperature greater than zero Kelvins doesn't enjoy fourth amendment protection? Am I going to have to start using neutrinos as drug mules?
inconsistent rulings (Score:2)
So how does this equate to the ruling against the police who were using an infrared camera to find the heat given off by sun lamps in home marijuana growers' setups? In that, the judge ruled they DID have an expectation of privacy when emitting in the eletromagnetic spectrum.
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In that one, the Supreme Court ruled that because infrared cameras aren't in widespread public use, people don't expect them to be used.
In this one, the court is saying "Well, anyone can call up the phone company and pretend to be a cop without having to produce any kind of papers or paper trail and find out where you are"
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Hmmm... it'll probably get overturned (Score:5, Insightful)
This decision seems incompatible with the GPS tracking decision, which said a warrant was required for GPS tracking. IIRC, the GPS decision didn't key off the fact that the cops had to plant a transmitter, they based the decision off the idea that it was really creepy. This seems to be an identical level of creepiness.
smoke signals, searchlights and satellite TV/HBO (Score:2)
OTOH, the same could be said of radio signals, TV broadcasts, HBO via satellite, etc. These are also broadcast whose raw signals are available for ANYONE to pick up. Yet it is deemed illegal to decode these radio signals, or listen in on cell phone conversations.
These t
Not over yet (Score:2)
I can't image the 6th Circuit will have the final word on this. Wouldn't be surprised to see this make it all the way up to the Supreme Court.
Given the ubiquity of cell phones in this country, and TFAs assertion that roughly 25% of people are on prepaid.... I'd put a conservative guess around 40-50 million people in the US who just lost a good chuck of their 4th Amendment Rights with this ruling.
Background (Score:2)
In case you're wondering, the Sixth Court of Appeals is overwhelmingly Republican. Of the thirty justices on the Sixth Circuit, twenty were appointed by Republican presidents (mostly Nixon and G W Bush). Only two were appointed by President Obama.
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I'm sorry, inside the parentheses it should have read, "mostly Reagan and G W Bush".
Just Prepaid? (Score:2)
Re:What is the point (Score:5, Insightful)
"did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the data emanating from his cell phone that showed its location."
Sounds pretty damn reasonable to me, I mean you are literally broadcasting who, where and what you are saying, all one need do is listen.
Talk about a non-story. It's not a real scandal like Obama eating dog or anything.
So, where are the publicly available devices capable of tracking this signal. I'm waiting for it, because I have a few senators, congressmen, and judges I think should be tracked 24/7. After all, they don't have any reasonable expectation of privacy, do they? And therefore they should be able to be tracked using the cell phone, right? Note: this isn't entirely a joke, I honestly think people should find a way to track lawmakers and judges if this decision doesn't get overturned. Obviously, the decision should be overturned, but if not, that would be a good way to insure a law protecting such information is enacted.
Of course people have a reasonable expectation of privacy for that data. It isn't publicly available, and in fact the police had to request it from the cell phone company. Just because you can track someone using it quite easily does not mean they do not have an expectation of privacy.
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I thought it would be fun to run for Congress on a libertarian platform. I would make it a reality show in that I would have a camera following me broadcasting everything I do live on the internet. A cross between The Truman Show and Mr. Smith goes to Washington. Then I realized that Federal Employees are not allowed to run for partisan political office because of the Hatch Act.
Re:What is the point roxy (Score:5, Insightful)
Police cars are usually broadcasting radio signals as well. Is it OK if I create an app that shows the real-time position of any police vehicles that are identified? Should be. Fairly easy to overlay on a google map. It is no different than seeing one drive down the street and then telling someone. We could make a web version that serves from another country to protect it from a take down. I'm gonna put this up over on kickstarter.
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Police cars are usually broadcasting radio signals as well. Is it OK if I create an app that shows the real-time position of any police vehicles that are identified? Should be. Fairly easy to overlay on a google map. It is no different than seeing one drive down the street and then telling someone. We could make a web version that serves from another country to protect it from a take down. I'm gonna put this up over on kickstarter.
This is where the police break out their favorite set of overly broad catch all laws and sentance you for interfering with an officer or some such nonsense. The same shit used to harass those who would flash their lights to warn of an oncoming speed trap.
There have already been apps like this pulled from the Apple appstore and they were just crowd sourced by eyeballs in the visible spectrum.
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Don't bother. Kickstarter will pull it before you can even boast about it. Do you think they are going to let that gravy train mess with the law one bit?
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It's a reasonable expectation in an unreasonable world.
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Yum. Dog. Drool. We liberals love dog meat!
I agree with you that the ruling seems to make sense. But how is it not news? It places an important market on the boundary between public and private.
And you know, next time I'm smuggling drugs, I certainly will remember to turn off my cell phone.
Re:Why does "reasonable expectation" matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd better be, because if not, then there is no real privacy for anyone ever.
The legal system doesn't know that he was doing anything illegal until after he's convicted of it. Up until then, he's presumed innocent, but accused of doing something illegal. It may seem like a fine distinction, but it's a critically important one.
To say that someone doesn't get their privacy rights because they're breaking the law is to say that cops get to decide someone's guilt or innocence -- which they don't get to do. Judges get to do that in a court of law. Under existing law, a judge can make this sort of determination during the investigatory phase: it's called "issuing a warrant".
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Because everybody has rights, or nobody has rights. If the police are allowed to use evidence they've gathered illegally, then there's nothing to prevent them from simply spying on everybody.
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By extension, if the police are allowed to use illegally-gathered evidence there is no protection from manufactured evidence. At that point, a bad guy is defined as anyone the police say is a bad guy. Anyone who believes the latter is a good thing needs to be removed from the gene pool.
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If you have a unique flashing blue light on your car and police notice that it shows up at different drug sites in a pattern, are they supposed to ignore it? What is different about the EM radiation from a cellphone other than you not being able to see it?
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"What is different about the EM radiation" is that police, "not being able to see it", won't "notice that it shows up at different drug sites in a pattern"
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So if the Coast Guard triangulates on the radio of a drug running boat to find it they shouldn't do this either?
If you emit radiation you should assume it is public.
Two big differences (Score:5, Insightful)
1) The phone wasn't broadcasting data that the police happened to notice. They had the phone company send the phone commands querying it for it's precise precision (this is a feature that is required by law to be in phones for the purpose of e911). So this was an active search, not a happenstance observation.
2) Because this isn't a signal that just anyone can monitor, but rather one that requires explicit cooperation of the phone company to generate and access, people have a reasonable expectation of privacy regarding that signal.
Those two facts essentially are the definition of when a search that requires a warrant.
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Good question. Why is it illegal for the police to use IR to view through the walls of a private residence without a warrant? You can't see those, either, but obviously the law does make it an issue...
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It wasn't the EM radiation that they were tracking. The police got a court order for the cell phone carrier to send them data on the location of the cell phone.
The confusing thing is how they could have gotten a court order without a warrant. If they had enough for a court order, how didn't they have enough for a warrant justifying the data collection implicit in the court order? The bizarreness of the US legal system.
More discussion of this on a legal site: http://www.volokh.com/2012/08/14/sixth-circui [volokh.com]
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Moronic troll.
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Troll or moron?
There's a difference?
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Yes, the auto correct is stupid~
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Tracfone, available at almost every supermarket I set foot in.
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Fry's has pre-paid phones on Verizon for sale for $15.
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So by that logic, they have right to listen into my conversation on my phone since it's broadcasting. Heck, talking in the privacy of my home is broadcasting sound waves.
Oh, hell, I send out alpha waves too. Guess in a few years it'll be legit to listen in on my thoughts when the technologies allows.
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It's not, and we all have an expectation of privacy regarding our cells.
Who's we? I never had any such illusions, cos I know how a cellphone works. But then, I have an IQ over 80 and I took high school physics... which I guess is more than you can say about a lot of people babbling on their "cells".
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People who have studied history. When governments don't have to follow rules, you get tyranny. A better thing to say BIG DEAL about is the fact that this guy was selling drugs. Who cares that he's selling drugs? That's between him and his clients.