You Have No Reasonable Expectation of Privacy

The Feds are still pushing for the clear legal ability to track your cell phone without a warrant.  Many people thought that, with the election of Barack Obama, that is issue would be over.  After all, it was supposedly struck from being explicit authorized by Bush's PATRIOT Act.

However, the Obama Administration takes the position that Americans have "no reasonable expectation of privacy" in their whereabouts, and therefore warrantless tracking of American citizens subjects should be permitted.  U.S. Dept. of Justice lawyers contend that your rights, which should be protected by the Fourth Amendment, are not violated when a phone company reveals records of your whereabouts to the government at their warrantless request.

Where does this stem from?  A couple of years ago, a band of armed robbers known as the "Scarecrow Bandits" (because of their plaid shirts and floppy hats they often wore) robbed more than 20 Texas banks.  They got caught because the feds perused the records of the mobile phone companies in the area to find what phones were making calls around the times of 12 of the heists.  They found two phones that made calls around the time of all 12.  Based on this evidence, a jury convicted two of the bandits.

In a case that is going before the Third Circuit on Friday, the ATF said it needed historical location information because a set of suspects "use their wireless telephones to arrange meetings and transactions."  U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisa Lenihan in Pennsylvania denied the Justice Department's attempt to obtain location data without a search warrant. 

According to Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, "The government is arguing that based on precedents from the 1970's, any record held by a third party about us, no matter how invasively collected, is not protected by the Fourth Amendment."

So basically, the government is taking a minimalist approach and saying that the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to your personal and private information if it is possible to be obtained through a third party.