"To Warrant or Not to Warrant? ACLU, Police Clash Over Cellphone Location Data"

[midnight]

“If these police departments can protect both public safety and privacy by meeting the warrant and probable cause requirements, then surely other agencies can as well,” she told lawmakers.

In an attempt to close a hole left by a recent Supreme Court decision, Senate and congressional lawmakers have proposed a joint bill that would help protect the privacy of geolocation data by forcing law enforcement agents to obtain a warrant to collect it.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that persistent monitoring of someone’s location by placing a GPS tracker on their vehicle was unreasonable and amounted to a Fourth Amendment search, but the court fell short of asserting that such tracking amounted to the kind of search that should always require a warrant and probable cause.

During oral arguments, Justice Antonin Scalia threw the ball into the court of lawmakers, suggesting they should do what the justices didn’t do and create protections that would guard against lazy or overzealous law enforcement agencies abusing the use of tracking data.http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/geo-location-data-protection/

[napoleon_in_rags]

1. That sad thing: Government battling SCOTUS for power equivalent to private sector.

The cell companies more or less have the data to locate you at any time, and there is this big noise over whether police should have the same. I agree with the SCOTUS ruling, but still, it should inspire thought over what data private companies have on us all.