ACLU: Is your local law enforcement tracking your cell phone's location w/o a warrant?

[EFerrari]

Cell Phone Location Tracking Public Records Request

March 31, 2012

Of all of the recent technological developments that have expanded the surveillance capabilities of law enforcement agencies at the expense of individual privacy, perhaps the most powerful is cell phone location tracking. And now, after an unprecedented records request by ACLU affiliates around the country, we know that this method is widespread and often used without adequate regard for constitutional protections, judicial oversight, or accountability.

Cell phones register their location with the network several times a minute and this function cannot be turned off while the phone is getting a wireless signal. The technology's threat to personal privacy is breathtaking.

All cell phones register their location with cell phone networks several times a minute, and this function cannot be turned off while the phone is getting a wireless signal. The threat to personal privacy presented by this technology is breathtaking: To know a person's location over time is to know a great deal about who a person is and what he or she values. As the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. explained:

"A person who knows all of another's travels can deduce whether he is a weekly church goer, a heavy drinker, a regular at the gym, an unfaithful husband, an outpatient receiving medical treatment, an associate of particular individuals or political groups — and not just one such fact about a person, but all such facts."

http://www.aclu.org/protecting-civil-liberties-digital-age/cell-phone-location-tracking-public-records-request

Page has link to interactive map of results and recommendations from ACLU

[bemildred]

1. I hope so, most of the time it sits on my bookshelf turned off. nt

[EFerrari]

7. This may be a solution for all those mislaid cell phones.

Call the police.

[MineralMan]

2. I have a cell phone only for emergency purposes.

It's off unless I make a call. Nobody has the number but me. If I turn it on to call about an emergency, I will be very glad if they know where I am located. Otherwise, I'm very uninteresting. That there is an ability to track cell phones is not news. The reality is that nobody's really interested in where you and your cell phone are in most cases. Tracking the location of all cell phones that are on is not a practical thing to do. Too much data with very little probability that that data will be useful in any way. Too expensive.

[bemildred]

3. FWIW:

You have to remove the battery to be SURE you can't be tracked, or so I have read many times.

[MineralMan]

5. Could be. I don't know. I don't much care, either.

As I said, my goings and comings are infinitely boring.

[bemildred]

6. Yeah, I'm the same way.

I only take it when I travel, and it's usually not on then, Edit: and I could care less if they "track" me. Must make "Sesame Street" look exciting.

[EFerrari]

4. The news part is the confirmation that law enforcement is in fact

doing warrantless while a few quaint holdouts still bother with the Constitution and with warrants.

[bemildred]

8. Lawlessness, is what it is.

Criminal cops.

[EFerrari]

9. The impunity is bizarre and disconcerting

if you remember a time when it was different and the niceties of due process weren't ridiculed but respected.

[bemildred]

10. Apparently, nobody thinks there is any need to watch the watchers these days.

If you are a cop, you are presumed have the right to be judge, jury, and then carry out punishment. Only political expediency seems to motivate investigations, and they always produce political results.