Posts tagged "cellphones"

People in California might be surprised to hear how many cellphone location records law enforcement in the U.S. requested from cellphone companies last year: 1.3 million. This does not mean that 1.3 million people had their cellphone records examined -- probably far more than that. This is because police often ask for location data for several people in every request.

The New York Times and ProPublica reported on the issue and talked with privacy advocates who believe that this information should only be turned over to police after they have obtained a search warrant. Police need to prove probable cause that a search will reveal evidence of a crime before they can obtain a warrant for a wiretap on a person's phone or track the phone in real time. They only have to show that location data will give them needed facts about a case to get the location data.

People continue to get arrested for recording police officers with their cellphones during arrests or traffic stops, but a few different court decisions lately have supported the right of citizens to do this.

In Oregon, the Court of Appeals reversed a man's conviction for violating a two-party consent law by recording a police officer during a traffic stop without telling the officer. The Oregon Court of Appeals said that the man did not have to tell the officer that he was recording him because the officer already announced that his car's video camera was recording the event.

Last summer, a jury in Chicago acquitted a woman of felony eavesdropping charges. The woman was planning to file a sexual harassment claim against a police officer and she recorded internal affairs officers as they tried to talk her out of the action.