ISN'T IT AMAZING HOW THIS BUNCH HAS QUICKLY PICKED UP WHERE GEORGE BUSH LEFT OFF?
Two years ago, when the FBI was stymied by a band of armed robbers
known as the "Scarecrow Bandits" that had robbed more than 20 Texas
banks, it came up with a novel method of locating the thieves.
FBI agents obtained logs from mobile phone companies
corresponding to what their cellular towers had recorded at the time of
a dozen different bank robberies in the Dallas area. The voluminous
records showed that two phones had made calls around the time of all 12
heists, and that those phones belonged to men named Tony Hewitt and
Corey Duffey. A jury eventually convicted the duo of multiple bank robbery and weapons charges.
Even though police are tapping into the locations of mobile phones
thousands of times a year, the legal ground rules remain unclear, and
federal privacy laws written a generation ago are ambiguous at best. On
Friday, the first federal appeals court to consider the topic will hear
oral arguments (PDF) in a case that could establish new standards for locating wireless devices.
In that case, the Obama administration has argued that warrantless
tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no "reasonable
expectation of privacy" in their–or at least their cell
phones'–whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that "a
customer's Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone
company reveals to the government its own records" that show where a
mobile device placed and received calls.
Those claims have alarmed the ACLU and other civil liberties
groups, which have opposed the Justice Department's request and plan to
tell the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia that
Americans' privacy deserves more protection and judicial oversight than
what the administration has proposed. read more>>>>>>>>>>>>>>