Feds rule that cell-phone GPS location not protected
September 7, 2012
The Obama administration told a federal court Tuesday that the public has no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in cellphone location data, and hence the authorities may obtain documents detailing a person’s movements from wireless carriers without a probable-cause warrant.
The administration, citing a 1976 Supreme Court precedent, said such data, like banking records, are “third-party records,” meaning customers have no right to keep it private. The government made the argument as it prepares for a re-trial of a previously convicted drug dealer whose conviction was reversed in January by the Supreme Court, which found that the government’s use of a GPS tracker on his vehicle was an illegal search.
Despite Obama’s faults, as I’ve described before, he is much more charismatic and inspiring than Romney. Ideally, Jill Stein could win and the corporatism and militarism would lose its supoort in society, but Obama is the best we have in the short term, along with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren here in the Northeast. The DNC was at least entertaining, unlike the RNC.
