Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Monday May 14 2018, @12:45AM   Printer-friendly
from the the-long-way-around dept.

More and more phone service for the imprisioned population is run through a single company. The ACLU writes that the company which handles prison phone calls, Securus, is also surveilling people who aren't in prison. This last week Senator Wyden (D-Oregon) described Securus' ability to obtain and share the cell phone location information of virtually anyone who uses a phone.

Real-time cell phone location tracking of a suspect requires a search warrant under federal law and, as some courts have held, the Fourth Amendment. Normally, when police want to track a suspect's cell phone in real time, they provide a warrant directly to the phone service provider, which reviews the warrant to confirm that it is valid before complying with the request. The major cellular service providers have law enforcement compliance teams comprised of trained staff who review warrants and other law enforcement requests and regularly reject or narrow requests that are improper or overbroad.

However, major phone carriers appear to have allowed Securus to bypass these procedures. Government investigators contracting with the company upload documentation justifying a request for cell phone location data to Securus' system. Securus, functioning as a middleman, pays other middlemen, who then pay major telecommunications carriers for the location information.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @01:01AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @01:01AM (#679385)

    You have the capability, use it! Warrants are for pointless justifications.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @06:07PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @06:07PM (#679683)

    Warrants are so evidence holds up in court. Extrajudicial actions don't need evidence.

    I suppose you could make the case that warrants shield the agency from lawsuits, but that doesn't seem to be a factor, either.