If you have a relatively new cell phone, it most likely has some form of Global Positioning System (GPS) locator technology installed on it. On my LG-4650, there are two settings for the GPS feature — one broadcasts your position to anyone capable of reading it, the other makes it available “only” to 911 services for location in case of an emergency. There is no option that I know of to turn it off completely. GPS technology is great; it can track your position virtually anywhere on the planet and, combined with a car’s navigation system, can get you anywhere you want to go. The bad thing about GPS, though, is that it can track you anywhere you go, something that would obviously be helpful to law enforcement.
Today’s Washington Post, though, brings news of two Federal Court judges placing limits on the FBI’s ability to use GPS and other cellular technology to track someone’s location.
The FBI may not track the locations of cell phone users without showing evidence that a crime occurred or is in progress, two federal judges ruled, saying that to do so would violate long-established privacy protections.
In separate rulings over the past two weeks, judges in Texas and New York denied FBI requests for court orders that would have forced wireless carriers to continuously reveal the location of a suspect’s cell phone as part of an ongoing investigation. Other judges have allowed the practice in other jurisdictions, but the recent rulings could change that.
(….)
The judges ruled that such information requires law enforcement to show “probable cause” that a crime has been or is being committed.
That requirement, which also is required for a search warrant, is a long-standing legal mandate designed to protect against overzealous or improper investigations, both judges said.
“When the government seeks to turn a mobile telephone into a means for contemporaneously tracking the movements of its user, the delicately balanced compromise that Congress has forged between effective law enforcement and individual privacy requires a showing of probable cause,” wrote federal Magistrate Judge James Orenstein of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
Bravo to these judges for actually remembering that the Fourth Amendment means what it says.
Linked with The Political Teen and The Indepundit and Soldiers’ Angel and Outside The Beltway and Mudville Gazette’s Open Post
