ACLU’s cellphone tracking report sparks new privacy legislation in California
By Alexander Baklajian
April 12, 2012 2:10 a.m.
A recent report by the American Civil Liberties Union regarding unwarranted cellphone tracking has prompted the introduction of new legislation in California.
The report, published last week, describes the findings of an extended nationwide ACLU records investigation into the number of police departments that used cellphone data to conduct surveillance. The report did not specify who was being tracked.
The ACLU filed public records requests with 380 state and local law enforcement agencies, of which over 200 responded. Of those, only 10 departments, none of which were in California, denied tracking cellphones.
“We knew that cellphone location tracking was being used and abused, but what we didn’t know was how widespread it was,” said Allie Bohm, advocacy and policy strategist for the ACLU.
The main concern is that police are gathering cellphone voice and location data without warrants, Bohm said.
On Tuesday, San Francisco Sen. Mark Leno introduced a new bill that would make it illegal for police to obtain cellphone location data without a warrant.
“SB 1434 carefully balances privacy concerns to safeguard Californians against improper government intrusion while ensuring that law enforcement officials can still use this technology when it is needed to protect public safety,” he said in a statement on his website.
The Supreme Court case U.S. v. Jones is often cited as setting a legal precedent that tracking cellphone use without a warrant is unconstitutional. In January, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that when the FBI attached a GPS device to narcotics suspect Antoine Jones’ car to track his movements without a valid warrant, it violated the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure.
The Supreme Court ruled that police violated the Fourth Amendment because they physically planted and used the GPS while the car was parked at Jones’ residence, said Norman Abrams, professor emeritus at the UCLA School of Law.
But Abrams said the court did not specifically rule that gathering GPS data without a warrant is unconstitutional.
Eric Bollens, a software architect at the UCLA Office of Information Technology, said that students have more to worry about than cellphone tracking when it comes to privacy.
“I don’t think cellphones are near your biggest problems. Yes, phones can be used to generate the same set of personal data, but we’re already doing it ourselves by maintaining an online presence,” Bollens said.
In addition to the new California legislation, a federal Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act, which would also require warrants for police to access cellphone location data, is up for review in the Senate Judiciary Committee.