{"id":4335,"date":"2010-06-22T15:10:13","date_gmt":"2010-06-22T15:02:28","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-06-22T15:02:28","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=4335","title":{"rendered":"CNET: Dragnet cell tracking"},"content":{"rendered":"

On CNET is this really interesting article: ACLU: FBI used ‘dragnet’-style warrantless cell tracking<\/a> by Declan McCullagh with links to pleadings.<\/p>\n

To nab a pair of men accused of robbing banks in Connecticut, court documents show the FBI turned to a novel investigative technique last year: warrantless monitoring of the locations of about 180 different cell phones, court documents show. <\/p>\n

The FBI obtained a secret order–it has not been made public–commanding nine different telephone companies to provide federal police “with all cell site tracking data and cell site locator information for all incoming and outgoing calls to and from the target numbers.”<\/p>\n

But because the U.S. Justice Department did not obtain a warrant by proving to a judge that there was probable cause to suspect criminal activity, there’s now a risk that the evidence from the location surveillance may be tossed out of court as illegally obtained. (Here’s a list (PDF) of the phone numbers tracked.) <\/p>\n

An attorney for Luis Soto, one of two brothers accused of stealing about $90,000 from Webster Bank and New Alliance Bank, asked a Connecticut judge on May 18 to suppress the location information, saying “the government obtained information that could be used to track the movements and locate the whereabouts at specific times of up to 180 people.” That violates their Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches, Soto said. <\/p>\n

On Friday, the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation submitted a friend-of-the-court brief (PDF) agreeing with the defense. It says: “Because cell site location information implicates an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable, the Fourth Amendment requires that the government obtain a warrant based on probable cause prior to collecting this information.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}