red states rule
02-11-2010, 12:16 PM
OK libs - you all had a collective stroke when Pres Bush was "listening to your phone calls" and tracking the terrorists via their bank records, and cell phone calls
Now, Obama wants to track Americans - not terrorists. Any comment? Any outrage? Or will you spin how this is OK since it is a liberal democrat who wants to do this?
Can the FBI Secretly Track Your Cell Phone?
Michael Isikoff
The Justice Department is poised this week to publicly defend a little known law enforcement practice that critics say may be the "sleeper" privacy issue of the 21st century: the collection of cell phone "tracking" records that identify the physical locations where the phones have been.
It may come as a surprise to most of the owners of the country's 277 million cell phones but their cell phone company retains records of where their device has been at all times--either because the phones have tiny GPS devices embedded inside or because each phone call is routed through towers that can be used to pinpoint the phones' location to within areas as small as a few hundred feet.
Such location "logs" never show up on your monthly cell phone bill. But federal court records filed over the past year indicate that federal prosecutors and the FBI have increasingly been obtaining such records in the course of criminal investigations--without any notice to the cell phone customer or any showing of "probable cause" that tracking the physical location of the phone will turn up evidence of an actual crime.
"Most people don't understand they are carrying a tracking device in their pockets," says Kevin Bankston, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy group that has been trying to monitor the Justice Department's practice.
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/declassified/archive/2010/02/10/can-the-fbi-secretly-track-your-cell-phone.aspx
Now, Obama wants to track Americans - not terrorists. Any comment? Any outrage? Or will you spin how this is OK since it is a liberal democrat who wants to do this?
Can the FBI Secretly Track Your Cell Phone?
Michael Isikoff
The Justice Department is poised this week to publicly defend a little known law enforcement practice that critics say may be the "sleeper" privacy issue of the 21st century: the collection of cell phone "tracking" records that identify the physical locations where the phones have been.
It may come as a surprise to most of the owners of the country's 277 million cell phones but their cell phone company retains records of where their device has been at all times--either because the phones have tiny GPS devices embedded inside or because each phone call is routed through towers that can be used to pinpoint the phones' location to within areas as small as a few hundred feet.
Such location "logs" never show up on your monthly cell phone bill. But federal court records filed over the past year indicate that federal prosecutors and the FBI have increasingly been obtaining such records in the course of criminal investigations--without any notice to the cell phone customer or any showing of "probable cause" that tracking the physical location of the phone will turn up evidence of an actual crime.
"Most people don't understand they are carrying a tracking device in their pockets," says Kevin Bankston, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy group that has been trying to monitor the Justice Department's practice.
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/declassified/archive/2010/02/10/can-the-fbi-secretly-track-your-cell-phone.aspx