Triangulation 0

Last month, On the Media ran a story on authorities’ use of cell phone tracking. From the website:

The cell phone that you’re carrying doubles as a tracking device. That’s right, Verizon has a record of where you’ve been and now the government is seeking explicit permission from the courts to access those records without probable cause. Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Kevin Bankston explains.

Follow the link for the story and transcript or listen here:

Among other things, the story included this tidbit (emphasis added):

At a security and surveillance conference a few months ago, the Sprint electronic surveillance manager admitted that law enforcement was making such extensive use of this capability that Sprint had set up essentially a Web portal for law enforcement to go to, to ping cell phones to find their location based on GPS. He said that that website had been used eight million times over a one-year period.

And that’s Sprint, usually ranking as the number three or four player in the industry. (When kids can hack into their schools’ computers and change their grades, we can wonder how secure, even with Sprint’s best efforts, that website can be.)

When we see portrayals of wireless tracking on the telly vision, it looks quite straightforward. The script has already convinced us that X is a bad guy. How convenient: with one call or click, the good guys know where X is.

Life ain’t telly vision (and anyone who has ever watched “reality TV” knows that telly vision ain’t life). Identifying the bad guy isn’t always as easy as it seems on NCIS and government has a significant record of tracking the wrong persons, such as this eight-year old who is on the Do Not Fly List, (and once you are on their list, getting off is haaarrrrrddd to do).

In Vermont, the ACLU has had enough:

The ACLU of Vermont is suing the state after unsuccessfully seeking to find out whether police agencies are using cellphone tracking technology to keep tabs on people’s whereabouts. Discuss

The state attorney general’s office refused public records requests by the ACLU seeking information about the practice, saying that information is exempt from public records statutes.

So the ACLU filed suit Monday in Washington Superior Court, asking a judge to force the state to produce documents under the Public Records Act.

(snip)

“The location information can reveal very personal data, like where they shop, whose houses they visit, churches they attend, therapists they see,’’ said Mariko Hirose, an ACLU legal fellow in New York.

Power exercised in secret is power exercised without restraint.

Afterthought, Have Cake Eat It Too Dept.:

Many persons who style themselves as “conservative” loudly broadcast their suspicion of government.

I find it curious that that suspicion, so dearly clutched to their hearts, seems to be conditional.

They are hostile to anything a government might do that leads to helping folks have food, shelter, health care, and other basic needs of life, yet enthusiastically support anything a government might do that leads to locking folks up.