The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are asking a federal court to order the U.S. Department of Justice to turn over records about the agency’s tracking of mobile phone users.

The two civil liberties groups have filed a lawsuit…saying U.S. residents should have a right to know the extent of mobile phone tracking done by U.S. attorneys offices.

In the past year and a half, multiple news reports and court cases have revealed that some U.S. attorneys were claiming not to need probable cause of a crime in order to track people using mobile phones, the groups say in their complaint. In some cases, U.S. attorneys have bypassed court-ordered warrants, with law enforcement agents obtaining “tracking data directly from mobile carriers without any court involvement,” the complaint says…

The ACLU filed a request for information on the tracking program, under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, in November, but the DOJ has not yet delivered the documents requested.

Of course, if you have complete trust in your government, you needn’t worry. Right?




  1. Here’s another one for you, Lyin’ Mike.

    Repubs love this shit. Sneaking around, poking around, snooping into people’s business with no cause and no warrant.

  2. Chris Mac says:

    Mustard Gas, can you point me to the post where eidard became Lyin’ Mike?

  3. #2 – Big Mac

    wtf are you talking about?

    I never said that that eideard became Lyin’ Mike.

    I was just providing the Lyin’ One with yet another example of how the Grand Old Party is chipping away, bit by bit, at our civil liberties, our privacy, all things that America stands for.

  4. Chris Mac says:

    #3 – I stand corrected. re eideard

    the said gop is all around you.. even infiltrated the dems.. it’s no big deal you tool

  5. Chris Mac says:

    not since the challenger have we made so many mistakes in a row

  6. Chris Mac says:

    Free advice from canada.. Please disregard

  7. Chris Mac says:

    My Bad. Canada loves you

  8. BigCarbonFoot says:

    If you’re worried, tie your phone to a stray dog and set him loose.

  9. moss says:

    I saw that rerun the other night.

  10. Mr. Fusion says:

    Going back to Mustard’s question, how are the right wing nuts, such as Lyin’ Mike and gq, going to answer this one. I know their balls must be hurting after the cops were caught lying about that drug bust.

  11. bobbo says:

    #10–Fusion==thats easy. Lyin’ Mike (sic!) has repeatedly posted that its “Liberal” that regulate industries==just as if he can’t tell a regulation that restricts corporate greed (ie-liberal legislation) from one that removes the safeguards (ie-repuklican as in the BushCo removal of the prohibition of futures trading in Oil==and they say the President can’t affect the economy?==Bushieboy will go down in History as ruining the USA!!)

    I said (sic) because to be lying as in lyin’ Mike, one assumes the speaker actually knows the truth and is posting something else. That gives Lyin’ Mike too much credit I think. His liberal/repuke postings look more like tertiary trichinosis to me.

  12. MikeN says:

    Last I checked the requirements for tracking of cell phones happened under Clinton. It just takes awhile for the government to take advantage of it. I think JCD would know the right time.

    Bobbo how is this a regulation?

  13. Awake says:

    MikeN –
    So you agree that it is permissible for government agencies to track the movements of individuals with no “probable cause” to do so?
    I guess that ‘unwarranted’ tracking (in the sense that there is no legal warrant and there is no good reason) should be allowed ‘just in case’ a person misbehaves and we have to prove it later.
    Let’s add some other ‘just in case’ tools:
    a) A national ID required for ALL financial and service transactions.
    b) Full keystroke logging required at the ISP level in order to be able to prove that you are an ‘evildoer’ should the need arise.
    c) Banning of all encryption technology except for use by the government.

    “Tracking allowable without probable cause”… I haven’t used the term Amerika before, but it is quickly becoming appropriate.

    And so MikeN, people like you are leading to the destruction of everything the real America has always stood for, replacing it instead with a fascist state. Shame on you.

  14. Patrick says:

    #13 – “c) Banning of all encryption technology except for use by the government.”

    You mean the failed attempt by Clinton that would have made it impossible to keep your data & communications private from the gov’t? This was beaten back by republicans.

  15. Awake says:

    Patrick –
    The bill banning encryption was actually proposed by (drum roll please!) A REPUBLICAN!

    On June 27, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) introduced the
    “Anti-Electronic Racketeering Act of 1995.” The legislation addresses
    a broad array of Internet-related issues, including encryption. Under
    the heading of “Racketeering-related crimes involving computers,” the
    bill would, in effect, criminalize the distribution of all encryption
    software over the Internet or other computer networks unless “the
    software at issue used a universal decoding device or program that was
    provided to the Department of Justice prior to the distribution.”

    http://epic.org/crypto/ban/epic.html

    HA!

  16. Patrick says:

    #15 – Go earlier. ’93 Clipper chip. Also this Presidential Decision Directive 5, issued by President Bill Clinton in 1993: “In making this decision, I do not intend to prevent the private sector from developing, or the government from approving, other microcircuits or algorithms that are equally effective in assuring both privacy and a secure key-escrow system.” I guess you don’t work in the security field…

  17. MikeN says:

    Patrick, the national ID card has come about more recently, unless you want to blame FDR for the SSN number.

  18. MikeN says:

    Awake, you should read Liberal Fascism. Republicans are certainly implementing fascism as well, but it has ‘liberal’ roots.

  19. Dave W says:

    Eh! As much as I hate the government and the current (and former) administration, I have no particular problem with tracking cell phones.

    It’s just like XM radio or satellite television. Anything that you broadcast into the open air is subject to being picked up by whoever or whatever the electro-magnetic waves hit.

    Don’t like it? Use a land line, or better yet, shut up!

  20. Awake says:

    MikeN –
    Yeah right, I should read “Liberal Fascism” as written by a contributing editor of “National Review”. No bias or outright lies should be expected from that kind of source… what are you going to suggest next? Maybe it will be “Use the White House press briefings as a credible source of information” Ha!

    To quote a review of your supposed “educational reading”:
    Goldberg quotes progressives and liberals who did, but he does not quote the conservatives who also did. He is right to note that fascist party programs contained active social welfare policies to be implemented through a corporatist state, so there were indeed overlaps with Progressives and with New Dealers. But so, too, were there overlaps with the world’s Social Democrats and Christian Democrats, as well as with the British Conservative Party from Harold Macmillan in the 1930s to Prime Minister Ted Heath in the 1970s, and even with the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations.

    The only thing these links prove is that fascism contained elements that were in the mainstream of 20th-century politics. Following Goldberg’s logic, I could rewrite this book and berate American liberals not for being closet fascists but for being closet conservatives or closet Christian Democrats. But that would puzzle Americans, not shock them. Shock, it seems, sells books.
    http://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Politics/dp/0385511841

    What are you going to suggest next? Some Ann Coulter as ‘fair and balanced’? How about some Michael Savage radio as a source of inspiration?

    Just because a person writes a book or has a radio show doesn’t mean that he/she is telling the truth.

  21. Patrick says:

    #17 “Patrick, the national ID card has come about more recently, unless you want to blame FDR for the SSN number.”

    FDR was a major screw up and crim when it came to personal liberties. I was talking about encryption though…

  22. Li says:

    It is worth noting that even Big Brother in the ‘free’ state of Oceana didn’t have the power to track the exact movements of everyone.

    In other words, if this is true (and it seems to be), there are substantive ways in which Americans are less free than the people in that dreadful, totalitarian fantasy state.

    That should be terrifying, it should give rise to action. But Americans are too lazy to save ourselves from the hideous monster that is gnawing on their feet.

  23. Glenn E. says:

    What do they mean by “tracking”? Your physical movements or your calling numbers (or both)? If the former, then isn’t “tracking” another way of saying “stalking”? So it’s legal for the government to stalk you, electronically, without any good reason. But you can’t stalk say a movie star, for any reason. Mainly because they’re a lot richer than you. What the DOJ is doing is date mining, pure and simple. Because what good would it do for them to know where your cell phone has been. Any smart criminal or terrorists would just strap the thing to a dog, and send it roaming. “Hey, track this feds.” I’m sure they’re some revenue model for this movement data, in the works.


0

Bad Behavior has blocked 5779 access attempts in the last 7 days.