EFF: Courts May Require Search Warrants for Cell Phone Location Records | Hacker News Reader

EFF: Courts May Require Search Warrants for Cell Phone Location Records

eff.org

37 pointsukdm8 comments

Excellent - so if this passes, and also passes all the higher courts then it will be against the law to arbitrarily track cell phones.

Except for matters of national security

Or when the NSA do it

Or if it's about terrorism

Or if the police asks the phone companies nicely, and then pardon them for breaking the law afterwards.

Yeah yeah, we know. Obligatory HN anti-government rant. Only here can that not only occur on a post about a government limiting its own powers (quite reasonably too) through its own system of checks and balances, but not even be a surprise.

That is because in the USA, the people grant the federal government it's powers; the federal government doesn't decide what those powers will be. At least in theory. So our government doesn't limit it's own powers, we do, usually by way of the courts. And when any part of that federal government grossly oversteps the powers we've granted it, some of us get quite upset about it.

Well, it's not exactly clear what powers we the people have granted the Federal Government, so the courts (part of the government) exist partially to interpret that. In this case, which should be cause for celebration, the courts came to the conclusion (which I think most here would agree with) that those powers do not include pulling cell phone records at will.

The commenter to which I responded got off topic on an anti-government tangent that made a number of assumptions not at all related to the article for no other reason than to make an anti-government rant, which I grant is a cheap source of karma here.

You have a constitution that is designed to prevent one man at the head of one agency deciding he doesn't like blacks, or communists or Jews or Muslims.

Instead you need at least the supreme court to decide you don't like these people. If you are allowed to tell phone companies to break the law and you will pardon them later - where do you stop?

Does anyone know whether this ruling affects the use of cell phone location records in civil cases?

For example these records have been used in divorce cases to provide evidence of affairs. (If two cell phones have a repeated tendency to meet each other in motel rooms, this is evidence that the carriers of said cell phones did likewise.) Does this ruling on what the police can do affect that at all?

In a civil case, why would the police be involved at all? IANAL, but I have been married three times, and I can't imagine a judge in a divorce case wasting time with cell phone records. However, I live in a no-fault divorce state, so my experience may not translate.

The police aren't involved in that case.

If the divorce is contested (which can happen in a no-fault state), the lawyers for either side can send subpoenas to anyone they like looking for relevant records, and a standard one to send is to the cellphone company. Which can reveal a lot.

My question is whether a sufficient right to the privacy of those records has been established to block those requests in principle.

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