[Infowarrior] - Judge Protects Cellphone Data On 4th Amendment Grounds, Cites Government's Technological Ignorance

[Richard Forno]

Judge Protects Cellphone Data On 4th Amendment Grounds, Cites Government's Technological Ignorance

from the they're-RIGHTS,-not-INCONVENIENCES dept

Various US government agencies have spent a lot of time and energy hoping to ensnare as much cell phone data as possible without having to deal with the "barriers" erected by the Fourth Amendment. The feds, along with Los Angeles law enforcement agencies, have bypassed the protections of the Fourth Amendment by deploying roving cell phone trackers that mimic mobile phone towers. The FISA Amendments Act has been used as a "blank check" for wholesale spying on Americans and has been abused often enough that the Director of National Intelligence was forced to admit these Fourth Amendment violations publicly.

The good news is that a few of these overreaches are receiving judicial pushback. Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy has a very brief writeup of a recent shutdown of another cellphone-related fishing expedition led by an assistant US Attorney. An attempt was made to acquire records for ALL cell phones utilizing four different towers in the area of a specific crime at the time of the event. As Kerr notes, this ruling refers to the Fifth Circuit court decision that found cell phone data to be protected under the Fourth Amendment, thus requiring a warrant to access it.

Magistrate Judge Smith points out that part of the issue is that the principals involved (the assistant US Attorney and a special agent) seemed to lack essential knowledge of the underlying technology, and that this lack of knowledge prevented them from recognizing the overreach of their request:

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http://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20121024/18225920815/judge-protects-cellphone-data-4th-amendment-grounds-cites-governments-technological-ignorance.shtml

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