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."
Too easy to spoof (Score:5, Interesting)
I find this reminiscent of the RIAA's arguments, where they show that infringement took place from an IP, but they cannot show who was sitting at the computer. Who can prove who was carrying a cell phone?
This is true (Score:1, Interesting)
I was on a jury for a federal case in February. The prosecutors spent a whole lot of time talking about cell phone records and showing who called who when and on what tower. To me it didn't really prove anything, because you just don't know who had possession of the phone when the calls were made.
It is worth saying again (Score:4, Interesting)
No, I don't know how to achieve that goal, short of re-wiring some brains.
Why stop at law enforcement? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why stop at law enforcement? Let all litigants in civil cases have access to the information. Think
about it. Cheating spouses, monitoring your kids; it'll be a great society if we all have this data. Ala "South Park" WifeTracker 2010 will be a great boon to all those paranoid husbands out there who's wives are meeting guys on Craigslist or PlentyofFish. At the same time why not have the tracking information go right to Twitter so we can all automatically know when Ernie down the hall takes a BM in the company lavatory.
Why stop there? Why not allow public access to all the surveillance cameras everywhere. We should have
access to all of this. Put it on youboob so we can all see it and eat popcorn at the same time.
Oh wait, let's also get your DNA so that every place you've ever been can be tracked. You know, that hair you leave behind in the tub at Travelodge? Hell, we can associate that to your tracking so we don't need electronic surveillance.
Yeah, that'll be a country that I want to live in and be a part of.
Personally, I find these trends very disheartening and with the ever increasing use of this information
being collected for profit and presumed "law enforcement" makes me worry about our future liberties. All law enforcement needs to do is have a presumption that a crime is being committed and your liberties and privacy go out the window.
Take a look at Iran, yeah I said it, and how they're using the technology to crack down on protesters in their country.
Re:"Right" to a private cell phone? (Score:2, Interesting)
By having it, you're explicitly granting permission for people to find you.
No. I did a project for a bank where the bank would ask user permission on Cell Phone (within 4 seconds) before authorizing the transaction on his Credit Card (since many credit card users were reporting fraud). The proposal of querying Cell Phone for its location went through heavy debate due to concerns of users privacy. It held some ground only with arguments that we were not tracking user on regular basis and we would record his/her locations only when he/she uses credit card.
Why Store is the Question (Score:1, Interesting)
The question is: why do the cell companies retain such information? If the bill is paid, then the knowledge of what cell tower was nearest to me when I made the call, and other similar matters, becomes totally indefensible. Why do they still retain such useless data?
I suppose it's because they can. Storage is cheap, and only a few extra lines of code will do the job.
Another example is the public library. They usually retain a list of all books that a patron has withdrawn. But why? What purpose does it serve? They don't sell targeted advertising or offer recommendations based upon a patron's reading history. When a book is returned, all record of that transaction should be immediately deleted simply because it no longer serves any purpose.
If these companies would throw away all such useless information about their patrons and clients, then privacy concerns would become very much smaller.
one cell phone company (Score:1, Interesting)
I work for a cell phone carrier. We are able to, and are asked to do so with regularity, triangulate the position of a cell phone based on signal strength to multiple towers. We do NOT require a warrant, subpoena or anything of the sort. What we have is a Microsoft Word document, sitting on a fileshare accessible to ?all? employees, containing a list of law enforcement districts and passwords. Every city/county/agency has an authorized contact person with a unique password. So Mr. 'Claims-to-be' Smith from the city of Ispyu calls up and says I want to know where this person is right now, my password is abc123, and they're told where the phone is at.
The article tells me this isn't unique to my company and is widespread across the cell phone industry. The article DIDN'T speak of the lol authentication mechanism though, so now you know.
Re:"Right" to a private cell phone? (Score:2, Interesting)
A phone number is a pretty shitty credential. To the point that I'm not sure I would even call it a credential.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)