(MintPress) – Police departments across the United States are fighting back against proposed legislation that would require law enforcement to have probable cause and obtain a search warrant when tracking cell phones via Global Positioning System (GPS) technology and using other GPS devices. Police say the cell phone tracking is a necessary tool to solve crimes and locate missing persons. But one civil rights group and Reps Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) say it is a violation of the Fourth Amendment and support the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act, proposed by Chaffetz and Goodlatte.
The crux of the bill would require police to prove probable cause to a judge and obtain a warrant before secretly applying a department-owned GPS on the vehicle of a suspected criminal or terrorist, or tracking wireless devices via its GPS feature. A warrant would also be needed to obtain tracking data from wireless companies. The bill currently awaits debate from the Senate Judiciary Committee and a House version of the bill is awaiting consideration from various committees.
In January, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police departments must obtain a warrant before attaching a GPS device to a vehicle, the first ever ruling on GPS tracking by authorities. The court noted that the warrantless observation was a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure.
The all-encompassing issue of police using GPS tracking stems from a lawsuit filed by Washington DC nightclub owner Antoine Jones when, in 2005, police attached a GPS device to his Jeep to track his movements in suspicion of a drug trafficking ring. Jones was convicted in the case after police followed his movements for four weeks, but the decision was ultimately overturned when it was ruled the police did not have a warrant for the tracking and that any usage by police of a GPS device on a vehicle constitutes as a search.
Authorities argued that a “person travelling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another.”
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito disagreed with the argument, saying the tracking device acted not as mere observation, but as a full-on search tactic.
“We need not identify with precision the point at which the tracking of this vehicle became a search, for the line was surely crossed before the 4-week mark,” Alito wrote in his analysis of the case.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is at odds with the police, saying that warrants are required in a vast majority of investigation situations. The ACLU has acknowledged that a warrant should not be necessary when tracking a missing person, but says the practice of cell phone tracking requires more regulation and oversight because it is a tactic “shrouded in secrecy.”
The ACLU filed public records requests with police departments around the country, finding that a majority of the respondents tracked cell phones without obtaining a warrant beforehand.
“While virtually all of the over 200 police departments that responded to our request said they track cell phones, only a tiny minority reported consistently obtaining a warrant and demonstrating probable cause to do so,” the ACLU wrote. “While that result is of great concern, it also shows that a warrant requirement is a completely reasonable and workable policy.
The civil rights group noted that there were two common forms of tracking: The most common involved police departments obtaining cell phone records from wireless companies and cell phone carriers. However, instances such as the one in Arizona see some police departments purchasing their own cell phone tracking technology instead of going through wireless carriers. A document obtained by the ACLU from the Gilbert, AZ Police Department spending nearly a quarter-million dollars on tracking technology.
“The Gilbert Police Department obtained a $150,000 grant from the State Homeland Security Program,” the document stated. “These funds, along with $94,195 of R.I.C.O monies, were used to purchase cell phone tracking equipment in June 2008 (total acquisition cost of 244, 195).”
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Cell phones have become common evidence police turn to during investigations. In March, it was reported that a federal appeals court ruled cell phones could be searched without a warrant, with the judge arguing the pretense that cell phones are like a personal diary, which can be searched to find information such as the owner’s address. The judge said a cell phone search could be used to get evidence of call logs and text messages.
Prior to the ruling, it was required of police to get a subpoena to access such information.
Cell phones have been instrumental in organizing demonstrations with the popular uprisings of the Arab Spring and Occupy movement, two movements that have seen their fair share of police crackdowns. During a presentation last October, journalist Lawrence Pintak said the older generations behind many of the regimes in the Middle East were not prepared for the technological organization displayed by the protesters, which played a role in their success.
“It was a perfect storm,” Pintak said in his speech. “You have these young, angry people who are good with technology, and you’ve got a bunch of old farts who’ve been ruling the region for a long time.”
Pintak noted that the uprising started with a cell phone picture of a Tunisian man setting himself on fire in protest of police corruption.
For the Occupy movement, mobilizations have been key to organizing and recording events. After repeated claims of police brutality in cities such as Oakland and Atlanta, cells phones have been used to capture photos and video of the incidents. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said on its website that the presence of technology at the protests could be enough to reduce the risks of unlawful police tactics.
“Just knowing that there are cameras watching can be enough to discourage police misconduct during a protest,” the EFF said.
Pintak said that without cellphones, it would also have been difficult to garner widespread global support for the effort, which toppled the likes of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi.
“It was a cell phone revolution,” Pintak said.