WIRED
Kim Zetter | September 7, 2012

The ACLU has sued the District of Columbia and two police officers for allegedly seizing the cellphone of a man who photographed a police officer allegedly mistreating a citizen, and for then stealing his memory card.

The suit, filed in federal court (.pdf) in Washington, D.C., alleges that the police officer violated Earl Staley, Jr.’s First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights by improperly searching and seizing his property while he was exercising his right to photograph the police performing their duty. Read on…

“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…

“Online Privacy: Americans Want It, and They Want It Now. So Why Can’t They Get It?”
(ITworld | Dan Tynan | July 24, 2012)

A new survey by Truste claims 94 percent of people care deeply about online privacy. Unfortunately, none of them are in the online advertising industry.

View entire article
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“Garret Keizer Looks At The State of Privacy”
(Vermont Public Radio Edition | Steve Zind |August 8, 2012)

Terrorism, technology and the Patriot Act are just three causes for a reduction in the level of privacy that Americans now enjoy. So have we willingly given abandoned our need and desire to maintain a certain level for privacy? Or has our interest just been temporarily relaxed in the post-9-11 digital age?

Author Garret Keizer’s new book “Privacy” looks at how we now define it and whether it has become obsolete. He discusses how views on privacy differ across social, political and cultural lines.

Listen to broadcast
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“What Happens When Our Cellphones Can Predict Our Every Move?”
(Slate | Will Oremus | August 8, 2012)

Your cellphone knows where you’ve been. And new research shows it can take a pretty good guess at where you’re going next.

A team of British researchers has developed an algorithm that uses tracking data on people’s phones to predict where they’ll be in 24 hours. The average error: just 20 meters.

View entire article
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“Appeals court OKs warrantless tracking”
(The Hill | Brendan Sasso | August 14, 2012)

A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that police do not need a warrant to track the location of a suspect’s phone.

The United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled that the Drug Enforcement Administration did not violate the constitutional rights of Melvin Skinner when it collected his phone’s GPS data.

DEA agents tracked Skinner’s pay-as-you-go phone as he transported drugs between Arizona and Tennessee. They arrested him at a rest stop in Texas with a motor home filled with more than 1,100 pounds of marijuana.

View entire article
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“Sixth Circuit: No Expectation of Privacy in Cell Phone GPS Data”
(Wall Street Journal | Joe Palazzolo | August 14, 2012)

Drug dealers, beware. Your pay-as-you-go phones probably have GPS. And, according to a federal appeals court in Cincinnati, police can track the signal they emit without a warrant.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that the Drug Enforcement Administration committed no Fourth Amendment violation in using a drug runner’s cellphone data to track his whereabouts.

View entire article
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“Markey confronts law enforcement, DOJ over growing cellphone record requests”
(The Hill | Julie Ershadi | August 10, 2012)

After investigations revealed a startling number of law enforcement requests for private cellphone data in recent years, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) on Thursday released a discussion draft of legislation that would limit such digital searches and seizures.

As co-chairman of the Congressional Bipartisan Privacy Caucus, Markey’s inquiry with nine major wireless carriers revealed that law enforcement officials at all levels of government made 1.3 million requests for user data from the companies in 2011.

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ARS TECHNICA
Cyrus Farivar | July 17, 2012

If you’re a student of the privacy and tech law worlds (or you just read Ars) then you’re probably familiar with last year’s Supreme Court decision, Jones v. United States. Earlier this year, the nine justices unanimously agreed that placing a GPS tracking device on a suspect’s car without a warrant was unconstitutional. That decision continues to have ripple effects throughout the privacy law world, and likely will for years to come.

However, as we pointed out in our January 2012 coverage, the justices disagreed amongst themselves about why it violated the Fourth Amendment, which protects citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures. One wing of the court found that installing the GPS device was an unwarranted physical trespass on private property and therefore illegal. The minority wing found the practice unconstitutional as it violated the doctrine known as “a reasonable expectation of privacy.”

View entire article

Related article:
It’s legal: cops seize cell phone, impersonate owner
(Arc Technica | Timothy B. Lee | July 19, 2012)