The Drug War Is A War On Civil Liberties
Bob Sullivan writes at Red Tape about what local cops learn and carriers earn from cellphone records:
Msnbc.com built a database of thousands of invoices issued by cellphone network providers to cities after cops asked for caller location and other personal information between 2009-2011. The invoices were first obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and released to the public earlier this month.The database offers perhaps the first blow-by-blow accounting of several cities' use of cellphone tracking as a crime-fighting tool and the potential blow to civil liberties that the requests represent.
...In Tacoma, while many of the 139 requests for cellphone data from Jan. 1, 2009 through June 30, 2011 involved serious crimes - including 37 murder investigations - the most frequent charge listed as the reason for the request is "UDCS," or unlawful distribution of a controlled substance. No additional details about those 51 requests, or the crimes behind them, were available. Police officials from Tacoma did not respond to requests for comment.
The bills run up by local detectives requesting cellphone data aren't small. Tacoma spent $17,496 checking cellphone records during that time span or nearly $1 for every 10 residents. Police in Oklahoma City spent $9,033 on cellphone records checks during one three-month stretch last year, according to the data compiled by msnbc.com. In Raleigh, officials made an average of one location "ping" request from just one carrier -- Sprint -- every three days during the second half of 2011.
"Location data for cops is like a kid in a candy store," said Mark Rasch, former head of the Justice Department's Computer Crime Unit. "It's a wonderful investigative tool which is highly intrusive of personal liberty and our rules on privacy, and rules governing access to this are not only antiquated but confusing and conflicting. Add to that a profit motive by carriers, and lack of sufficient oversight on law enforcement access to the records, and you have a prescription for, at a minimum, violations of civil liberties."
Here, from a recent blog item, Kate Ager of LadiesinKeene.com writes about how we're too used to the drug war to see it correctly:
The officers who arrived at the home on Post Road were there to enter the man's home without his consent, search through all of his belongings, take anything deemed 'illegal' if they were to find it, then try to put the man in a cage for possessing it.
"The officers who arrived at the home on Post Road were there to enter the man's home without his consent, search through all of his belongings, take anything deemed 'illegal' if they were to find it, then try to put the man in a cage for possessing it."
Aaaaannnd here we go with blog items substituting for evidence to bring up talking points.
Now. When and if this gets to court, the wronged person can point at the requirements of the 4th Amendment and show that fishing expeditions are excluded from trial evidence.
Again: misbehavior on the part of law enforcement is NOT what the law allows, and it's not even a good indicator of the validity of a law or law enforcement code. This can't be banned - it can only be forced into Constitutional compliance, difficult at best because the public wants arrests, dammit, not legalities.
Radwaste at April 18, 2012 2:56 PM
I usually can't find my cell phone. I leave it behind, or take it when I think it's charging. Really, cell phones don't prove location anyway. This is especially true if you have kids. Young ones play with them, older ones "borrow" them.
Unless I happen to take a picture of myself with my phone, there's no proving (or even reasonably thinking) I had it with me at a given time. Not everyone has their phones glued to their body/clothes (yet).
Shannon M. Howell at April 18, 2012 6:39 PM
Meanwhile the Austin Police Department showed up at the wrong address and killed the homeowner's dog.
More data, less intelligence.
MarkD at April 19, 2012 6:28 AM
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