Privacy issues abound
“What Do We Mean When We Talk About Privacy? An interview with Garret Keizer”
(Slate|June Thomas|August 30, 2012)
Is a desire for privacy a purely selfish impulse, or does it reflect consideration of other people’s feelings? Is privacy something that money can buy? What happens to our private selves when we can’t escape surveillance? What happens to our public personas when they escape from our control? These are just a few of the questions essayist Garret Keizer tackles in his new book, Privacy. The interview lasts around 27 minutes.
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“Police seizure of text messages violated 4th Amendment, judge rules”
(Ars Technica|Jon Brodkin|September 5, 2012)
At 6:08am, on October 4, 2009, Trisha Oliver frantically called 911 from her apartment in Cranston, Rhode Island when her six-year-old son, Marco Nieves, stopped breathing. The Fire Department took Marco to Hasbro Children’s Hospital, where he was found to be in full cardiac arrest. He died 11 hours later.
By 6:20am, Sgt. Michael Kite of the Cranston Police Department had arrived at the apartment, where he found Oliver, her boyfriend Michael Patino, and their 14-month-old daughter, Jazlyn Oliver. Kite observed a couple of stripped beds and linens on the floor, a trash can with vomit inside it, dark brown vomit in a toilet, and, crucially, a cell phone on the kitchen counter. Kite picked up the cell phone, and it was at that point—in the just-released opinion of a Rhode Island state court—that police proceeded to mangle a murder case and violate Patino’s Fourth Amendment rights by viewing text messages without a warrant. Read on…
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“What Will Happen If the Feds Get Warrantless Access to Phone Location Data”
(The Atlantic|Christopher Mims|September 6, 2012)
On Tuesday prosecutors for the Obama administration argued that records of location data gathered by cell-phone companies should be available to law enforcement even when no search warrant has previously been issued by a judge.
In other words, If Uncle Sam wins on this argument, every law-enforcement agency in the country will be able to track your every move. More importantly, access to location data as comprehensive as that available to cell-phone carriers could allow law enforcement to determine everything from your complete social network and your your health status to how likely it is that you’ll repay a loan. Read on…
Tags: Cell phones, Fourth Amendment, law enforcement, Privacy