Cellphones Increasingly Used As Evidence In Court 232
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."
"Right" to a private cell phone? (Score:2, Insightful)
Carrying a cellphone isn't displaying any expectation of privacy. By having it, you're explicitly granting permission for people to find you.
Alibi's? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Right" to a private cell phone? (Score:2, Insightful)
This just really goes to show you that you could put your phone on its Airplane setting before you commit a crime
A question that needs answering in these cases... (Score:4, Insightful)
How does the prosecution prove that the cellphone was in possession of the accused at the time?
My wife frequently borrows my phone if she needs to go out and hers is dead. I'll do the same with hers. Its a portable device, with no onboard biometrics. Anyone could pick it up and transport it somewhere without the owner's knowledge or permission. What better way to frame someone for a crime than to take their phone to the scene, do the crime, call the phone (to generate a calling record with cell-tower location data) then return it.
Re:Alibi's? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that we are aware of the increasing use by law enforcement of cell phone records, won't criminal simply setup their cell phones at some alibi spot, go off and commit the crime and use the records as support for that alibi?
So, not only do mobile phones bust the alibi of the guilty, they now also cause doubts about the alibi of those not guilty??
Doesn't that mean that a mobile phone should not be used as evidence?
Re:Location doesn't prove much for us... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Alibi's? (Score:3, Insightful)
No, because most criminals aren't that intelligent or thoughtful.
Re:"Right" to a private cell phone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Erh... no. I grant people the right too reach me, as in, get in contact with me, if, and only if, I choose to answer it when they call me.
That's what I explicitly grant when carrying a cell around.
Re:"Right" to a private cell phone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Carrying a cellphone isn't displaying any expectation of privacy. By having it, you're explicitly granting permission for people to find you.
I think you're explicitly granting permission for people to call you, which is not the same thing as knowing where you are. Similarly, just because my cellphone can record audio and video while "off-hook" doesn't mean that I'm explicitly granting permission for people to eavesdrop my day-to-day conversations.
Polygraph (Score:2, Insightful)
Wy do I have the feeling this is used like Lie Detector tests?
If a polygraph test indicates guilt, then the prosecution will use all means to get it admissible. However, if it indicates innocence, it will be "brushed over"...
privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks for the tip (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"Right" to a private cell phone? (Score:1, Insightful)
Carrying a cellphone isn't displaying any expectation of privacy. By having it, you're explicitly granting permission for people to find you.
No. It's granting permission for me to make and receive calls. Nothing more.
Just because you use email to send/receive messages doesn't mean you want everyone to know *where* you sent the messages from. The idea is being able to contact people and having them contact you. It is not to announce your location.
Re:This is not an invasion of privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Any personally identifying information held by a company or individual about a second individual should be considered confidential and treated as such. Otherwise you might end up in the situation where your doctor doesn't tell anyone you have disease X, however your credit card company could because they know you've been buying medications. Who the information comes from is really of little consequence; it's the information itself that matters.
Re:"Right" to a private cell phone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Carrying a cellphone isn't displaying any expectation of privacy. By having it, you're explicitly granting permission for people to find you.
Actually, I am granting the right to attempt to contact me (I can lie about my location, even if I honor the request/answer) to those whom I give credentials (i.e. Cell#)
That is a far cry from explicitly allowing the whole world to know my exact location.
Re:"Right" to a private cell phone? (Score:5, Insightful)
But if I have the phone set to meeting/silent, my expectation is of privacy
No, your expectation is not to be disturbed. If you wanted privacy you would have turned the phone off......
Disposable cellphone (Score:2, Insightful)
The smart criminals just carry a disposable cellphone, so it's a non-issue for them. Warrantless cellphone tracking just hurts everyone else.
Re:"Right" to a private cell phone? (Score:2, Insightful)
What the hell? (Score:4, Insightful)
Suspect: My phone was stolen not long before the incident, actually. I was making a call in the town, which probably also comes up on the log you have, when a guy snapped it from my hands. I hadn't reported it yet. Say, you don't think this mugger would have also tried to harm someone else to get their belongings, do you? I mean, someone less pansy than me who might have put up a fight?
What a pile of useless garbage this scheme is.
Re:Alibi's? (Score:4, Insightful)
Consider the differences between a false positive and a false negative.
Make cellphones mandatory? (Score:5, Insightful)
However mobile phones are merely "technology", not people. So the ability to track them is a much easier sell - especially as it wouldn't involve the people at all, just some computers 'n' stuff.It seems to me that all a government has to do is make tha carrying of a mobile phone an obligation for citizens, visitors and the like. Getting rid of anonymous phones would also be part of the deal, but in many places they're already gone or on the way out.
What happens next is that people have been issued with de-facto ID cards. Ones that can be accessed passively without the owner's knowledge or permission. Yes you could turn it off, but people are so addicted to them, and so afraid of missing "that" call (we know this: almost everyone will stop doing *anything* to answer a call when the phone rings - they just can't ignore it or let it ring). amd so insecure, that hardly anyone would. It might even become socially unacceptable - like smoking in public, or travelling naked. Even better, the cost to the government is much lower than for an ID card scheme, and once everyone has one, all the time, they can be used for issuing summones, texting out tax demands, traffic tickets and almost anything else that a government or official body would need to send to it's citizens.
Presumably the next step would be to have them implanted at birth?
Re:A question that needs answering in these cases. (Score:2, Insightful)
People don't get convicted because their cell phone was or wasn't in one location or another, they get convicted because they have no plausible explanation for why their cell phone was in a location that fits in perfectly with the story the prosecution is telling and contradicts the story the defense is telling.
Amateurs! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"Right" to a private cell phone? (Score:4, Insightful)
You assume that the network has the ability to determine that your phone is set to silent. I think this is a false assumption. The network just knows that your phone is connected -- it has no idea if your phone is set to ring/vibrate/silent, what ringtone you use, etc.
Furthermore, why should it matter what setting your phone is on? You either have privacy (i.e: law enforcement needs a warrant to view your location information) or you don't. Why are we even talking about the 'silent' setting, as though that should make an iota of difference in either direction?
Re:"Right" to a private cell phone? (Score:2, Insightful)
If we all wanted true privacy we would move to the country-side, but there is not enough country-side for all to have that kind of privacy.
Hardly. In the country, where the population is much less dense, everyone knows everyone (because "everyone" is so few people). People are much more likely to know your movements, your habits, and your business in a small town than a big city.
People who desire anonymity and privacy will almost always go to a big city, not to the countryside.