Even though police are tapping into the locations of mobile phones thousands of times a year, the legal ground rules remain unclear, and federal privacy laws written a generation ago are ambiguous at best. On Friday, the first federal appeals court to consider the topic will hear oral arguments (PDF) in a case that could establish new standards for locating wireless devices.
In that case, the Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in their--or at least their cell phones'--whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that "a customer's Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records" that show where a mobile device placed and received calls.'
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Yes, well, I don't think they are just tapping locations. A lot of the time they are listening to people's conversations as well.
ReplyDeleteAll this surveillance and yet some people are still able to blow people up at will, probably because they have a hell of a lot of data to sift through while poking their noses into everybody's private conversations.