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To shorthand the basic principle, you’re only promised privacy for your personal papers. Since this info is shared with a third party (the phone company) it’s
by CPLX 8y ago
To shorthand the basic principle, you’re only promised privacy for your personal papers.
Since this info is shared with a third party (the phone company) it’s no longer considered private.
Of course that’s problematic but that’s the basic concept.
- giancarlostoro 8y agoIf they dont make it public to everyone they shouldnt plainly make it public to the government. In an age of identity theft and smarter high tech criminals this sort of data should be on lockdown and under scrutiny for access.
- Taniwha 8y agoBut it's not shared with the phone company - this case is about pinging a phone to make it give up its GPS location
- Bartweiss 8y agoThat's a key question for this case, yeah. United States v. Graham held, with significant controversy, that obtaining historical location data from a phone company is shared with a third party and so lacks 4th Amendment protection. But the Massachusetts court finding for this case centered on the ping; law enforcement can't ask third parties to conduct specific searches in its place, which was effectively what they did here. (Similarly, there's a standing case about the FBI use of paid GeekSquad informants which hinges on whether they were being paid for discoveries in the course of work, or implicitly hired to conduct searches.) That said, two judges here held that even if the Fourth Amendment doesn't protect location data, the Massachusetts constitution does. So once the targeted-request program ends, we may see this question revisited.