Cellphones Increasingly Used As Evidence In Court 232
Posted
by
kdawson
from the we-know-where-you-were-last-summer dept.
from the we-know-where-you-were-last-summer dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that the case of Mikhail Mallayev, who was convicted in March of murder after data from his cellphone disproved his alibi, highlights the surge in law enforcement's use of increasingly sophisticated cellular tracking techniques to keep tabs on suspects before they are arrested and build criminal cases against them by mapping their past movements. But cellphone tracking is raising concerns about civil liberties in a debate that pits public safety against privacy rights. Investigators seeking warrants must provide a judge with probable cause that a crime has been committed, but investigators often obtain cell-tracking records under lower standards of judicial review — through subpoenas, which are granted routinely, or through an intermediate type of court order based on an argument that the information requested would be relevant to an investigation. 'Cell phone providers store an increasing amount of sensitive data about where you are and when, based on which cell towers your phone uses when making a call. Until now, the government has routinely seized these records without search warrants,' said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. Last year the Federal District Court in Pittsburgh ruled that a search warrant is required even for historical phone location records, but the Justice Department has appealed the ruling. 'The cost of carrying a cellphone should not include the loss of one's personal privacy,' said Catherine Crump, a lawyer for the ACLU."
Re:"Right" to a private cell phone? (Score:2, Informative)
What if you have it set to silent or "meeting" mode?
It's still going to be in contact w/ the towers and it's location will be known. As far as I know, those modes simply turn off the ringer. If you put it in flight mode or remove the battery so that it is no longer transmitting there will be no location data sent.
Re:"Right" to a private cell phone? (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think explicitly means what you think it means. The word you need is implicitly.
Re:"Right" to a private cell phone? (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/celltracking/lenihanorder.pdf [eff.org]
However this can vary by jurisdiction so YMMV.
Now if someone wanted to track you on their own and can do so, that's their prerogative.
This is not an invasion of privacy (Score:4, Informative)
Cellphone data to be stored 12 months (Score:3, Informative)
Cellphone traffic data has to be stored for 6-24 months in the EU, exactly for this reason. It's useful for law enforcement. The Dutch Parliament yesterday accepted a law that requires this data to be stored for 12 months (who called who, where). Internet data (who used what IP-adress at what moment, who mailed who, but not what websites were visited, gmail, twitter etc.) will only need to be stored for 6 months.
If you phone is stolen... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"Right" to a private cell phone? (Score:5, Informative)
It's still going to be in contact w/ the towers and it's location will be known
Small nitpick, but the exact location is not known unless you are actively engaged in a call/data session. GSM has "location areas" set up for idle phones. When a call/SMS comes in for your phone a paging message is broadcast on every tower within that location area. The page tells your phone to connect to the network to receive the call/SMS. Until your phone responds to that page the carrier has only a vague idea of where it is. The size of the location area varies depending on population and other factors but they are generally large enough that it would be pretty hard to locate you based solely on an idle phone.
I'm not as familiar with CDMA but I believe it uses a similar concept to handle the paging of idle phones. It makes good sense when you think about it -- if the phone had to contact the network every single time you moved between towers you'd drain the battery a lot faster while in motion. In this manner it only has to contact the network when you move between location areas, which happens a lot less, thus saving battery life.
Re:"Right" to a private cell phone? (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, A-GPS is better than normal GPS as A-GPS equipment can work on its own to find a satellite or it can use the network to gain a headstart on traditional GPS units.
It doesn't rely on it, it uses it in addition to the same techniques used by other GPS units.