Friday, February 12, 2010

Big Brother Holder

A few of us are non-partisan when it comes to civil liberties. I didn't like a lot of what was in the "Patriot Act," (neither did Feingold AND Sensenbrenner), and I don't like what I see here, either.

Even though police are tapping into the locations of mobile phones thousands of times a year, the legal ground rules remain unclear, and federal privacy laws written a generation ago are ambiguous at best. On Friday, the first federal appeals court to consider the topic will hear oral arguments (PDF) in a case that could establish new standards for locating wireless devices.

In that case, the Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in their--or at least their cell phones'--whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that "a customer's Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records" that show where a mobile device placed and received calls. . . .

A phone is a phone is a phone. If a warrant is required for pen-trace/home phone taps, a warrant is required for OTHER phone tracing, such as location.

What we have here is more of the Party-In-Government (PIG) action we saw from Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II.

The TEA Parties are not just about "taxes."

HT: Lott

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