Originally published November 29 2005
Federal judge rejects request to track cell phones
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The Department of Justice's request to track cell phone information without providing probable cause first has been rejected by a New York federal judge. The judge said in matters of routine investigation tracking should not be allowed.
A federal judge in New York has rejected the Department of Justice's request to track people's cell phone information without first providing probable cause for such investigations.
Magistrate Judge James Orenstein of the Eastern District of New York issued an order on Monday denying the Justice Department's application for disclosure of information regarding wireless subscribers.
The Department of Justice had asked that carriers be required to provide information on individual subscribers, including details on caller location, outbound call origination and call termination, to help in its surveillance of potential suspects.
If approved, the application would have allowed law enforcement officials to essentially use cell phones as tracking devices to observe where people are traveling and with whom they are speaking without first proving in court why it should be allowed to do so.
The New York ruling concurs with a similar decision handed down in a Texas District Court in September that blocked the same practice in that state.
Both rulings dealt with requests to use cell phone data garnered via so-called Pen Registers and other tapping devices that can be used to gather phone call records, and cellular site access information that could give away a caller's location.
"Existing law does not permit the government to obtain the requested information on a prospective, real-time basis without a showing of probable cause," Orenstein wrote.
"When the government seeks to turn a mobile telephone into a means for contemporaneously tracking the movements of its user, the delicately balanced compromise that Congress has forged between effective law enforcement and individual privacy requires a showing of probable cause," the judge wrote in his decision.
According to Kevin Bankston, an attorney with the EFF, the Justice Department has routinely been granted access to wireless subscriber data without proving probable cause by courts that he said have misinterpreted the same laws cited by Orenstein in his denial.
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