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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @03:27PM
These two words have been used as the catchall for police abuses for ages now.
The take away from this all is that the cell phone is the single biggest risk to personal freedom the human has ever seen.
Because of it your carrier and by design[legal design] now so too law enforcement, knows where you are at all times.
With this information expect abuse in every way possible. Why? Because they can.
So, in the future I expect:
-- speeding tickets based on changes in position and calculations of average velocity required to get me from A to B. If such velocity exceeds any speed limit....ticket.
-- because they know where everyone is at all times, they automatically have a list of suspects when a crime is committed. This is more than enough to rip your life apart because of some petty theft reported with 100 ft of where you got coffee this morning.
-- insurance fraud investigations would kill for this info...so they will lobby for this stuff to be sold and it will happen.
-- cheating husbands/wifes
on and on and on....