DamianTV
03-08-2012, 11:09 AM
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/obama-admin-wants-warrantless-access-to-cell-phone-location-data.ars
A Maryland court last week ruled that the government does not need a warrant to force a cell phone provider to disclose more than six months of data on the movements of one of its customers. Two defendants had been accused of armed robbery, and a key piece of evidence against them was data about the movements of the pair's cell phones. The defendants had sought to suppress this location evidence because the government did not get a warrant before seeking the data from network providers. But last Thursday, Judge Richard D. Bennett ruled that a warrant is not required to obtain cell-site location records (CSLR) from a wireless carrier.
Courts all over the country have been wrestling with this question, and the government has been on something of a winning streak. While one court ruled last year that such information requests violate the Fourth Amendment, most others have reached the opposite conclusion.
The Obama administration laid out its position in a legal brief last month, arguing that customers have "no privacy interest" in CSLR held by a network provider. Under a legal principle known as the "third-party doctrine," information voluntarily disclosed to a third party ceases to enjoy Fourth Amendment protection. The government contends that this rule applies to cell phone location data collected by a network provider.
While this may be a plausible reading of previous precedents, the practical implications are alarming. While CSLRs are not as detailed as data that can be gathered via GPS, months of data can still reveal a host of sensitive information about a person's movements. If the third-party doctrine allows the government to obtain such information without a warrant, that's a strong argument for re-considering the third-party doctrine.
Limited precision
The Obama administration made its argument in a Texas case being heard by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The government had applied for a subpoena compelling MetroPCS and T-Mobile to turn over sixty days of cell phone location data for two phones believed to belong to suspects in a drug case. A judge denied the request, ruling that the government needed a search warrant to obtain such location data.
In a lengthy opinion, Magistrate Judge Stephen Smith, who has emerged as a leading advocate for stricter judicial oversight of electronic surveillance, concluded that "compelled warrantless disclosure of cell site data violates the Fourth Amendment."
Judge Smith's opinion drew heavily on testimony that Matt Blaze, a prominent University of Pennsylvania computer scientist, gave to Congress in 2010. Blaze argued that as the number and technical sophistication of cellular towers increases, cell phone companies are able to collect increasingly precise information about the location of their customers. "Under some circumstances, the latest generation of this technology permits the network to calculate users' locations with a precision that approaches that of GPS," Blaze said.
In its brief, the Obama Administration faulted Judge Smith for relying on Blaze's testimony without holding a hearing that would have allowed it to present contrary evidence. And it argued that Blaze's observations do not apply to the data it is seeking in the Texas case. According to the government, T-Mobile and MetroPCS only retain information about a phone's location at the beginning and end of a phone call, not when the phone is idle. And the data T-Mobile and MetroPCS have collected is much less precise than the theoretical maximum Blaze described.
Contacted by Ars Technica, Blaze told us that he wasn't able to comment on the specifics of the T-Mobile or MetroPCS networks. But he questioned the wisdom of making potentially precedent-setting decisions based on the low precision of location data held by a particular wireless firm. Other firms may have more precise data, and all firms' data is likely to get more accurate as towers become denser and more sophisticated.
Blaze also noted that the growing use of picocells and femtocells, which are designed to provide coverage to an individual building or even an individual floor within a building, meant that CSLRs could sometimes provide extremely precise information about a customer's location. And whether such fine-grained location data is available for a particular customer will only be known after a cellular provider discloses its customer's location data.
(more on link)
Really? What is the big deal about getting a fucking search warrant? Unless of course, they want to continue to roll with the Guilty Until Proven Innocent!
A Maryland court last week ruled that the government does not need a warrant to force a cell phone provider to disclose more than six months of data on the movements of one of its customers. Two defendants had been accused of armed robbery, and a key piece of evidence against them was data about the movements of the pair's cell phones. The defendants had sought to suppress this location evidence because the government did not get a warrant before seeking the data from network providers. But last Thursday, Judge Richard D. Bennett ruled that a warrant is not required to obtain cell-site location records (CSLR) from a wireless carrier.
Courts all over the country have been wrestling with this question, and the government has been on something of a winning streak. While one court ruled last year that such information requests violate the Fourth Amendment, most others have reached the opposite conclusion.
The Obama administration laid out its position in a legal brief last month, arguing that customers have "no privacy interest" in CSLR held by a network provider. Under a legal principle known as the "third-party doctrine," information voluntarily disclosed to a third party ceases to enjoy Fourth Amendment protection. The government contends that this rule applies to cell phone location data collected by a network provider.
While this may be a plausible reading of previous precedents, the practical implications are alarming. While CSLRs are not as detailed as data that can be gathered via GPS, months of data can still reveal a host of sensitive information about a person's movements. If the third-party doctrine allows the government to obtain such information without a warrant, that's a strong argument for re-considering the third-party doctrine.
Limited precision
The Obama administration made its argument in a Texas case being heard by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The government had applied for a subpoena compelling MetroPCS and T-Mobile to turn over sixty days of cell phone location data for two phones believed to belong to suspects in a drug case. A judge denied the request, ruling that the government needed a search warrant to obtain such location data.
In a lengthy opinion, Magistrate Judge Stephen Smith, who has emerged as a leading advocate for stricter judicial oversight of electronic surveillance, concluded that "compelled warrantless disclosure of cell site data violates the Fourth Amendment."
Judge Smith's opinion drew heavily on testimony that Matt Blaze, a prominent University of Pennsylvania computer scientist, gave to Congress in 2010. Blaze argued that as the number and technical sophistication of cellular towers increases, cell phone companies are able to collect increasingly precise information about the location of their customers. "Under some circumstances, the latest generation of this technology permits the network to calculate users' locations with a precision that approaches that of GPS," Blaze said.
In its brief, the Obama Administration faulted Judge Smith for relying on Blaze's testimony without holding a hearing that would have allowed it to present contrary evidence. And it argued that Blaze's observations do not apply to the data it is seeking in the Texas case. According to the government, T-Mobile and MetroPCS only retain information about a phone's location at the beginning and end of a phone call, not when the phone is idle. And the data T-Mobile and MetroPCS have collected is much less precise than the theoretical maximum Blaze described.
Contacted by Ars Technica, Blaze told us that he wasn't able to comment on the specifics of the T-Mobile or MetroPCS networks. But he questioned the wisdom of making potentially precedent-setting decisions based on the low precision of location data held by a particular wireless firm. Other firms may have more precise data, and all firms' data is likely to get more accurate as towers become denser and more sophisticated.
Blaze also noted that the growing use of picocells and femtocells, which are designed to provide coverage to an individual building or even an individual floor within a building, meant that CSLRs could sometimes provide extremely precise information about a customer's location. And whether such fine-grained location data is available for a particular customer will only be known after a cellular provider discloses its customer's location data.
(more on link)
Really? What is the big deal about getting a fucking search warrant? Unless of course, they want to continue to roll with the Guilty Until Proven Innocent!