The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are suing the office of Justice to obtain official records concerning the U.S. government’s possible use of cell-phone-tracking technology to spy on individuals without first obtaining a court order based on probable cause.

In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the civil-liberties groups said the DOJ floped to supply an adequate and timely response to a records desire filed last year under the Freedom of data Act.

“This is a critical opportunity to shed much-needed light on possibly unconstitutional government surveillance techniques,” said Catherine Crump, the ACLU lead attorney. “Signing up for cell-phone services should not be synonymous with signing up to be spied on and tracked by the government.”

Complying With Current Law

At least some U.S. attorneys may have violated a DOJ “internal recommendation” that “federal prosecutors seek warrants based on probable cause to obtain precise location info in private areas,” according to a Washington Post scoop

published last November. Moreover, the ACLU said other media reports have raised the possibility that law-enforcement officers may have obtained tracking input directly from the nation’s mobile carriers without any court involvement.

Due to the limited amount of knowledge currently available about the government’s tracking practices, the ACLU said it believes the lack of data on the issue raises serious questions about whether the government is complying with current law and the U.S. Constitution.

“The government’s policies and practices for monitoring the locations of mobile phones are unclear,” the ACLU noted in its original records demand. “It is not even obvious whether the government routinely obtains mobile-phone location info without any court supervision whatsoever.”

info pertaining to the DOJ’s procedures for obtaining real-time tracking knowledge is vital to the public’s understanding of the privacy risks of carrying a mobile…

Original post by Mike

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