WASHINGTON - Law enforcement tracking of cellphones, once the province mainly of federal agents, has grown into a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials as well, with hundreds of departments, large and small, often using it aggressively with little or no court oversight, new documents show.
The practice has become big business for cellphone companies, too, with a handful of carriers marketing a catalog of “surveillance fees’’ to police departments to determine a suspect’s location, trace phone calls and texts, or provide other services....
With cellphones now ubiquitous, the police describe phone tracing as an increasingly valuable weapon in a range of cases, including emergencies like child abductions and suicide calls, and investigations into drug cases, sex crimes, and murders. One California police training manual describes cellphones as “the virtual biographer of our daily activities,’’ providing a rich hunting ground for learning someone’s contacts and travels.
But internal documents, which were provided to the New York Times by the ACLU, open a window into a cloak-and-dagger practice that police officials are wary about discussing publicly. While cell tracking by local police departments has received some limited public attention in the past few years, the ACLU documents show that the practice is in much wider use - with far looser safeguards - than officials have previously acknowledged....
But your government and authorities are being straight with you, 'murkn!
Law enforcement officials said the legal questions were outweighed by the real-life benefits of using cell tracking....
They always say that when they violate your rights.
Many departments try to keep cell tracking secret, the documents show, because of possible backlash from the public and legal problems.
Although there is no evidence that the police have listened to phone calls without warrants, some defense lawyers have challenged other kinds of evidence gained through warrantless cell tracking.
“Do not mention to the public or the media the use of cellphone technology or equipment used to locate the targeted subject,’’ the Iowa City Police Department warned officers in one training manual.
The topic should also be kept out of police reports, it advised.
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Related:
"Text messaging spam on cellphones is a growing problem" by Nicole Perlroth | New York Times, April 08, 2012
NEW YORK - Once the scourge of e-mail providers and the Postal Service, spammers have infiltrated the last refuge of spam-free communication: cellphones....
Smartphone users may succumb to that offer for a Walmart gift card or a free iPhone in exchange for taking a survey and divulging personal information, like their addresses or their transaction history - which can then be sold to digital marketers or even used to crack their bank accounts.
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