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Secret Service bought location data pulled from common apps:
The Secret Service paid a private company for access to location data generated by common smartphone apps, Motherboard reports. Internal documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request show that the agency spent $35,844 for a one-year subscription to Babel Street's product Locate X, which tracks the location of devices via data harvested from popular apps.
As Motherboard notes, the glaring issue with this contract is that it allows the law enforcement agency to buy information that it would normally need a warrant or a court order to obtain.
[...] In March, Protocol reported that US Customs and Border Protection purchased Locate X, and a former Babel Street employee told Protocol that the Secret Service and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were using the location-tracking tech. But Motherboard has the first confirmation that the Secret Service did in fact purchase Locate X.
[...] Senator Ron Wyden is reportedly planning legislation to block law enforcement from purchasing products like Locate X.
"It is clear that multiple federal agencies have turned to purchasing Americans' data to buy their way around Americans' Fourth Amendment Rights. I'm drafting legislation to close this loophole, and ensure the Fourth Amendment isn't for sale," Wyden said in a statement provided to Motherboard.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2020, @03:55PM (4 children)
>Never.
Is the phone company a third party you voluntarily give information to where a warrant is required?
If so, seems it would violate never apply 4th or 5th to third party info voluntarily given?
Or maybe the telephone is so necessary for life that the information is not voluntarily given.
If so, now days could not the same be said of cell phones?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2020, @06:09PM (2 children)
Cell phones should be covered by papers and effects in the 4th. Communications are NOT covered, but many people believe they should be. The best ways to do that IMO would be:
Amend the Constitution to cover it, and nationalize phone and internet service under a mandate similar to USPS (and eventually we will run into the same problems of technology advancing and changing the methods of communication)
Amend the Constitution to expand 4th Amendment protections to explicitly cover privacy and communications (establishment would not be a fan of this one)
Cut out the middlemen and create direct communication devices that do not require infrastructure that can be used to spy on people (technologically infeasible ATM, but maybe someday)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2020, @03:10PM (1 child)
"Communications," as in the voice content of a telephone call, are indeed covered by the fourth amendment, even if it is on a cell phone. Just because it is on a cell phone does not entitle the government to listen in - a warrant is required. The data ABOUT a phone call like the number dialed and the length of a call are NOT covered by the Fourth Amendment but nevertheless require a court order to obtain (even a blanket once, thanks Patriot Act!) Data a company collects as part of an App where the company has explicitly said they can convey such information to others.... no. You've signed away your right of privacy with the developer and the government can just be another customer to obtain that data.
The way to fix it would be to enact a law saying such information may not be accessed by the government without some condition like a court order with a warrant. The same way pen registers were created. And if one wants to change the law around pen registers, again legislation would be the way to fix it. No constitutional amendments necessary.
If true and total end-to-end encryptions were possible to the point of obfuscating even the location (i.e. no pen register data) the government would act to prevent such a system under the ethic that it would facilitate crime. They might even be right about that, given the current mores of the country. One might be able to engineer a different system where the right to privacy is paramount, but you would also have to account for other moral imperatives like how crime can be investigated and not just scream about "muh rights!" If rights and responsibilities are not balanced then trouble will ensue.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2020, @05:53PM
Crime is never a reason to give up freedom. Fix the root causes of the crime, or find the individuals responsible and punish them. No reason to take my privacy because $criminal doing $crime. Especially when the vast majority of "crimes" are completely victimless acts possessing or selling contraband.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2020, @03:03PM
First, understand what pen registers are and how they're different. Info about who you called, duration of call and if it connected or not, where the call was made from, and even content of text messages are pen register information. They require an ex parte court order but not a warrant to obtain. You have a limited right of privacy on such information. Listening to content of a voice call requires a warrant, that you made a call only requires a court order but not a warrant. (And remember the initial rulings were that information about your call has no right of privacy at all and all the police had to do was ask. Then the legislature intervened to require a court order...) But all of these things, currently, are granted because it has been found that a person should have some reasonable right of privacy.
This is different because in these apps that are used the user has voluntarily ceded any expectation of privacy in the terms of agreement. If you have voluntarily agreed that certain information is not private between you and the company why should you have any expectation of privacy? And why can't the government be just another customer buying that data alongside any other interested party who will pay?
Does it have to be that way? No. But it will take either not doing business with any such company or convincing the legislature that new laws need to be enacted to prevent companies from selling such data to the government. Probably a hard sell in today's political environment.