Loudernet

by Declan McCullagh

The FBI and other police agencies don’t need to obtain a search warrant to learn the locations of Americans’ cell phones, the U.S. Department of Justice told a federal appeals court in Philadelphia on Friday.

A Justice Department attorney told the Third Circuit Court of Appeals that there is no constitutional problem with obtaining records from cellular providers that can reveal the approximate locations of handheld and mobile devices. (See CNET’s previous article.)

There “is no constitutional bar” to acquiring “routine business records held by a communications service provider,” said Mark Eckenwiler, a senior attorney in the criminal division of the Justice Department. He added, “The government is not required to use a warrant when it uses a tracking device.”

This is the first federal appeals court to address warrantless location tracking, which raises novel issues of government surveillance and whether Americans have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their–or at least their cell phones’ –whereabouts.

Judge Dolores Sloviter sharply questioned Eckenwiler, saying that location data can reveal whether people “have been at a protest, or at a meeting, or at a political meeting” and that rogue governments could misuse that information. (See transcript excerpts below.)

via Justice Dept. defends warrantless cell phone tracking | Politics and Law – CNET News.

The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone’s microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations.

The technique is called a “roving bug,” and was approved by top U.S. Department of Justice officials for use against members of a New York organized crime family who were wary of conventional surveillance techniques such as tailing a suspect or wiretapping him.

Nextel cell phones owned by two alleged mobsters, John Ardito and his attorney Peter Peluso, were used by the FBI to listen in on nearby conversations. The FBI views Ardito as one of the most powerful men in the Genovese family, a major part of the national Mafia.

The surveillance technique came to light in an opinion published this week by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan. He ruled that the “roving bug” was legal because federal wiretapping law is broad enough to permit eavesdropping even of conversations that take place near a suspect’s cell phone.

via FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool | Tech News on ZDNet.