Secret cell phone surveillance

p2pnet
Sep. 28, 2005

p2p news / p2pnet:- Before the US government is allowed to secretly track people via their cell phones, it should have good reason to believe a crime has been, or is about to be, committed, says the EFF.

"Allowing the government to turn anyone's cell phone into a tracking device without probable cause will enable a surveillance society that would make Big Brother jealous," says EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) staff lawyer Kevin Bankston.

Last month, the court denied a Department of Justice request to monitor a cell phone's location.

“The ruling revealed that the DOJ has routinely been securing court orders for real-time cell phone tracking without probable cause and without any law authorizing the surveillance,” says the EFF.

“Many cell phone users aren't aware that their phones can be used to track their location in real-time, even when they aren't using them.”

The foundation has filed a friend-of-the-court brief opposing a DOJ motion asking the court to reconsider its pro-privacy decision.

“EFF argues that the Fourth Amendment requires a search warrant for such invasive surveillance, issued under the same strict standards as warrants that authorize phone and Internet wiretaps,” it says.

“The government has tried to justify this gross expansion of its authority by combining two surveillance statutes, neither of which authorize cell phone tracking on their own.”

But there’s no support anywhere for this argument, “ not in the statutes' language, nor in legislative history, case law, or academic commentary,” the EFF states.

“Indeed, it contradicts the government's own electronic evidence manual and, "It's as if the government wants the court to believe that zero plus zero somehow equals one," says Bankston.

The DOJ is expected to appeal to the district court if magistrate judge Orenstein denies its motion to reconsider, says the EFF, adding that the court hasn’t said when it intends to rule.

In the meanwhile, new Federal Communications Commission regulations slated for 2007 will make it easier for US enforcement agencies to run online ‘wiretaps’.