Little Rock Police Are Tracking You Through Your Cell Phone

Cell Phone Location Tracking Public

Link to Article:
http://www.aclu.org/protecting-civil-libertie...

July 18, 2012

Of all of the recent technological developments that have expanded the surveillance capabilities of law enforcement agencies at the expense of individual privacy, perhaps the most powerful is cell phone location tracking. And now, after an unprecedented records request by ACLU affiliates around the country, we know that this method is widespread and often used without adequate regard for constitutional protections, judicial oversight, or accountability.

All cell phones register their location with cell phone networks several times a minute, and this function cannot be turned off while the phone is getting a wireless signal. The threat to personal privacy presented by this technology is breathtaking.

To know a person's location over time is to know a great deal about who a person is and what he or she values. As the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. explained:

"A person who knows all of another's travels can deduce whether he is a weekly church goer, a heavy drinker, a regular at the gym, an unfaithful husband, an outpatient receiving medical treatment, an associate of particular individuals or political groups — and not just one such fact about a person, but all such facts."

The government should have to obtain a warrant based upon probable cause before tracking cell phones. That is what is necessary to protect Americans' privacy, and it is also what is required under the Constitution.(In certain emergency situations, for example to locate a missing person, tracking a cell phone without a warrant is acceptable.)

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 3:30pm

The New York Times and Propublica jointly published an editorial last week entitled,“That’s Not My Phone, It’s My Tracker.” The authors review the sorry state of cell phone location privacy, raise and dismiss privacy-protecting options such as regularly removing the battery, or living without a phone, and conclude that what we should fight back linguistically at least, by calling these devices “trackers” rather than phones.
That would certainly be more accurate at the moment and help raise awareness of the current reality—but it is not only the linguistic framing that we should regard as subject to redefinition. We should redefine what these devices actually are. Really the situation is simple: if cell phone carriers retain the location data that our phones generate as a side effect of how they operate, then they are trackers. If the carriers do not retain that data, then they are not, at least routinely so (though they could still be activated as trackers with a court order). That is why we have demanded that the carriers stop routinely retaining location data. There is absolutely no reason that we should tolerate the retention of that data as normal or acceptable—no reason we should not have smartphones that are not trackers. Renaming our phones is not enough.

WHAT YOUR CELL PHONE COMPANY IS TELLING THE GOVERNMENT ABOUT YOU

Link To Article:
http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liber...

It’s time for cell phone companies to be up front with customers about how their personal information – including their location history and who they call and text with – is being collected, stored, and shared with the government. In an op-ed on CNN.com , ACLU attorney Catherine Crump argues that wireless carriers –“who we pay to provide a service, not to keep tabs on us for the government”– must let customers know what is happening with this sensitive information:

What little has come to light so far about the companies' practices does not paint a comforting picture. Addressing a surveillance industry conference in 2009, Sprint's electronic surveillance manager revealed that the company had received so many requests for location data that it set up a website where the police could conveniently access the information from the comfort of their desks. In just a 13-month period, he said, the company had provided law enforcement with 8 million individual location data points. Other than Sprint, we do not have even this type of basic information about the frequency of requests for any of the other cell phone companies.

The poorly understood relationship between cell phone companies and police raises grave privacy concerns. Like the companies, law enforcement agencies have a strong incentive to keep what is actually happening a secret, lest the public find out and demand new legal protections. More than 10 years ago, the Justice Department convinced the House of Representatives to abandon legislation that would have required law enforcement agencies to compile similar statistics, arguing that it would turn "crime fighters into bookkeepers."

The excessive secrecy has frustrated the ability of the American people to have an informed debate on just how much information police should have access to without judicial oversight or having to show probable cause. It has also prevented Congress and the courts from effectively addressing these intrusive surveillance powers. That is not how our system of government is supposed to work.

Contact The Arkansas ACLU If You're Civil Rights Have Been Violated:

http://www.acluarkansas.org/content/index.php...

Privacy Concern: Local Law Enforcement Uses Your Cell Phone As An Eavesdropping Device Even If Phone Is Turned Off.

Link To Article:
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029-6140191.html

FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool

December 1, 2006 2:20 PM PST

The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone's microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations.
The technique is called a "roving bug," and was approved by top U.S. Department of Justice officials for use against members of a New York organized crime family who were wary of conventional surveillance techniques such as tailing a suspect or wiretapping him.

Nextel cell phones owned by two alleged mobsters, John Ardito and his attorney Peter Peluso, were used by the FBI to listen in on nearby conversations. The FBI views Ardito as one of the most powerful men in the Genovese family, a major part of the national Mafia.

The surveillance technique came to light in an opinion published this week by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan. He ruled that the "roving bug" was legal because federal wiretapping law is broad enough to permit eavesdropping even of conversations that take place near a suspect's cell phone.

Kaplan's opinion said that the eavesdropping technique "functioned whether the phone was powered on or off." Some handsets can't be fully powered down without removing the battery; for instance, some Nokia models will wake up when turned off if an alarm is set.

While the Genovese crime family prosecution appears to be the first time a remote-eavesdropping mechanism has been used in a criminal case, the technique has been discussed in security circles for years.

The U.S. Commerce Department's security office warns that "a cellular telephone can be turned into a microphone and transmitter for the purpose of listening to conversations in the vicinity of the phone." An article in the Financial Times last year said mobile providers can "remotely install a piece of software on to any handset, without the owner's knowledge, which will activate the microphone even when its owner is not making a call."

Fox News Report on Police Tracking Your Cell Phone:

Check out this video on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch...

Police Using Cell Phones to Track People Without Consent. Police Are Illegally Doing This Without A Search Warrant

Check out this video on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch...