US Agency Cancels Contract For Warrantless Tracking of Mobile Devices (apnews.com) 18
America's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has "canceled its contract for a surveillance tool that enables warrantless tracking of mobile devices," reports the Associated Press.
They note the move comes "after lawmakers, a prosecutor and a judge raised concerns about the legality of the tool in criminal investigations." ATF, the federal agency responsible for enforcing the nation's gun laws, told The Associated Press that it discontinued what it called a "pilot" program using a tool called Webloc after Rep. Michael Cloud, a Republican from Texas, and Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, expressed reservations about the agency's use of bulk commercial location data. Webloc, which is made by a vendor called Penlink, sources data from consumer apps and advertising networks, which collect the location of mobile devices from consumers who download apps or browse the web...
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that police needed a warrant to obtain historic movement data from cellphone companies on a criminal suspect. But it has never addressed the growing practice of commercially acquired data.
Other users of Webloc include the U.S. military and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement but also local law enforcement agencies such as police in places like Elk Grove, Calif. and Durham, N.C. The technology has also expanded around the world, with the national police in El Salvador and Hungarian intelligence agencies as customers, according to a report from earlier this year from Citizen Lab, a group of researchers at the University of Toronto who investigate digital threats to civil society.
The article notes that other U.S. law enforcement agencies continue to buy commercial geolocation data, "including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security."
They note the move comes "after lawmakers, a prosecutor and a judge raised concerns about the legality of the tool in criminal investigations." ATF, the federal agency responsible for enforcing the nation's gun laws, told The Associated Press that it discontinued what it called a "pilot" program using a tool called Webloc after Rep. Michael Cloud, a Republican from Texas, and Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, expressed reservations about the agency's use of bulk commercial location data. Webloc, which is made by a vendor called Penlink, sources data from consumer apps and advertising networks, which collect the location of mobile devices from consumers who download apps or browse the web...
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that police needed a warrant to obtain historic movement data from cellphone companies on a criminal suspect. But it has never addressed the growing practice of commercially acquired data.
Other users of Webloc include the U.S. military and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement but also local law enforcement agencies such as police in places like Elk Grove, Calif. and Durham, N.C. The technology has also expanded around the world, with the national police in El Salvador and Hungarian intelligence agencies as customers, according to a report from earlier this year from Citizen Lab, a group of researchers at the University of Toronto who investigate digital threats to civil society.
The article notes that other U.S. law enforcement agencies continue to buy commercial geolocation data, "including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security."
They're not tracking people (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Wrong. It wasn't tax law that moved certain drugs to controlled substances.
don need no steenkin'... (Score:4, Insightful)
other U.S. law enforcement agencies continue to buy commercial geolocation data, "including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security."
The Grabber's lapdog armies don't care about little things like warrants and legal searches!
They KNOW they're ALWAYS right, so who needs a judge to tell them.
Flock Cameras? (Score:2)
Re:Flock Cameras? (Score:5, Informative)
You don't have a right to privacy in public, this has a lot of precedent about it.
If you don't want Flock cameras you have to ban them via law at you local or state level but there's nothing de facto illegal about them being outside in public.
Re: (Score:3)
True but what about the data being collected?
Re: (Score:3)
Can be banned from use as evidence at the state and local level if it's acquired without a warrant. At the federal level, not so much.
The big stink over Flock cameras has been local police department contracts where the local police have partnered with federal agencies to share data.
Two problems with federal use: First, they might not be using it in a court case, but for intelligence purposes. Second, they can install their own cameras. No local permission needed.
Re: (Score:2)
"if it's acquired without a warrant"
Two words: parallel construction
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah that's a wholly different story which is what i meant by de facto illegal on just having cameras out there . From my knowledge that is also going to be a local/state thing, there is nothing unconstitutional or illegal Federally about law enforcement or even a private company having that data if it was recorded out in public. I am not a lawyer.
Re: (Score:1)
You don't have a right to privacy in public, this has a lot of precedent about it.
Let me correct that for you.
Lawyers have decided you don't have a right to privacy in public.
The public itself has never been asked, which means that, as usual, the lawyers wrote laws and created precedents in violation of the US Bill of Rights, which provides for unspecified rights 'retained by the people', 9th Amendment, and 'reserved to the people', 10th Amendment.
No big deal, it's not like the entire profession swears oaths to uphold the law. Wait, they do?
Perhaps it's time for the public to assert som
Re: (Score:2)
As a side note, the EU passed a law making *you* the owner of all rights to your face, body, and voice.
Re: (Score:2)
perhaps there are situations where a right to privacy does and should exist
And there are, they in statute but Flock cameras are not one of them currently. Is it illegal for a private business to have cameras pointing into public streets from their property?
The only difference with Flock is they have permission from your City/State to place them in public areas. That's who you need to talk to to change that. It's been done in places already, we can wax philosophic afterwards.
A broken clock (Score:2)
...is right twice a day.
Small efficiency gain in the assembly line (Score:3)
I'm imagining devices going by a conveyor belt, and a worker with a wirecutter is making a brief snip on each of the devices as it travels by.
The boss walks up, and the snipper guy asks "Is it true? Is the customer canceling?"
The boss briefly nods but then shakes his head. "Yeah, they're canc--no, I mean they still want the devices. They just don't want the snipping anymore. They say go ahead and leave the warrant-detection-and-lookup circuit live."
"Good. I never really understood what I was doing here. They're still weren't required to check the sensor anyway, so why disable it?"
The boss explained, "so we could charge them for the snipping."
Government wants 'white [blank] card' (Score:2)
The technology has also expanded ...
Does anyone think Starbucks is buying this information? Or, that McDonalds is checking your location at 7:30 this morning? This surveillance is happening purely at the behest of government, just like the building of warplanes and ICBMs. That's why it's a small skip and jump to this technology becoming militarized. It's already militarized with mobile cameras carrying Hellfire missiles: Such as Predator drones. This version of surveillance is literally aimed at people and it will be militarized for use
Watch for the boomerang program (Score:3)
They will be right back to try to reimpose it as soon as the heat's off. Never trust this alleged administration further than you can spit a two-headed rat.
Supreme Court ruling (Score:2)
In case you missed it...
The Supreme Court of the United States ruled Monday, June 29, 2026 that: Constitutional privacy protections under the Fourth Amendment apply to cellphone location data, including "geofence warrants" used by law enforcement. The Justices determined that accessing a user's location history from a third party constitutes a "search," requiring probable cause and a warrant.