Warrantless Cellphone Tracking Is Upheld

An important element in Tuesday’s ruling is the court’s presumption of what consumers should know about the way cellphone technology works. “A cell service subscriber, like a telephone user, understands that his cellphone must send a signal to a nearby cell tower in order to wirelessly connect his call,” the court ruled, going on to note that “contractual terms of service and providers’ privacy policies expressly state that a provider uses a subscriber’s location information to route his cellphone calls.”       

In any event, the court added, the use of cellphones “is entirely voluntary.”       

The ruling also gave a nod to the way in which fast-moving technological advances have challenged age-old laws on privacy. Consumers today may want privacy over location records, the court acknowledged: “But the recourse for these desires is in the market or the political process: in demanding that service providers do away with such records (or anonymize them) or in lobbying elected representatives to enact statutory protections.”       

Cellphone privacy measures have been proposed in the Senate and House that would require law enforcement agents to obtain search warrants before prying open location records. Montana recently became the first state to require a warrant for location data. Maine soon followed. California passed a similar measure last year but Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, vetoed it, saying it did not strike what he called the right balance between the demands of civil libertarians and the police.       

A version of this article appeared in print on July 31, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Warrantless Cellphone Tracking Is Upheld.

Article Appeared @http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/31/technology/warrantless-cellphone-tracking-is-upheld.html?hp&_r=2&

Also Appeared @http://blackubiquity.com/news/item/15245-warrantless-cellphone-tracking-is-upheld

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