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The United State Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has ruled that a "probable cause" warrant is required before law enforcement can obtain cellular location records for an individual. Two thieves in Baltimore were identified when their locations were correlated with robberies near Baltimore. Their conviction will be allowed to stand, as law enforcement had a good-faith belief that the technique was permissible at the time, but future investigations will be subject to the ruling. The US 4th Circuit is a Federal court that handles appeals from the states of Maryland, North and South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia. The ruling does not apply in other districts, which so far have ruled against the requirement, but could allow cases in other states to reach the Supreme Court.
Ars Technica coverage:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/08/warrant-required-for-mobile-phone-location-tracking-us-appeals-court-rules/
Link to the ruling, in PDF form:
http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/Published/124659.P.pdf
(Score: 1) by Hyperturtle on Thursday August 06 2015, @02:21PM
I am sure they can just ask Wells Fargo for the details (referencing the other story about how they are assessing consumer behavior via video game use on portables like phones) or the car manufacturer if your phone is paired to the car, and ask them without needing to get a warrant.
This feels like it is just a whitewashing of sorts; put the beast in an enclosure and shaming it, while doing nothing to secure the beast in that enclosure. The wireless internet of things doesn't offer much physical security when everything is recording something about you or that you walked by a recycling bin or sat in a restaurant with an ibeacon in every seat.
The fact that people can be tracked with their phones down to the level of the building they were in, and the actual chair they sat on -- for marketing purposes--it's just as wrong, but trying to take away the same conveniences that track them is not going to work for many people. It's simply too convenient.
If you ever heard the Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man", at the beginning, one of the characters is pretty pissed. The opening doesn make sense until the end of the show. I feel like that guy, having worked on networks that got used in ways I never would have thought were tenable because people would reject this. But I am not angry at the network, no more than I am angry at the roads that we drive on.
But times change, people remain ignorant or don't care, or choose to do nothing, or believe it is for the best because of a small interest they have which benefits them. And as such, man is served due to realizing too late what that means.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Thursday August 06 2015, @02:52PM
Private companies handing *any* data over to government without a court order should be made explicitly illegal.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday August 06 2015, @05:02PM
Eventually some form of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act [wikipedia.org] will get passed. All it takes is another few high profile hack attacks, and our nation's cyberwarriors will be collaborating more closely with corporations.
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