Uncle Sam seeks time in tower dump data grab case after judge calls it 'unconstitutional' The United States is requesting [PDF] a month-long extension to the deadline for its final decision regarding an appeal against a judge's ruling that obtaining tower dumps is unconstitutional. The tower dumps requested in this case could reveal the details of thousands of users' devices... The term "tower dump" refers to …
Became normalized, criminals would start leaving phones at home - because if the prosecutors want to claim to a jury that evidence someone's phone is in the vicinity at the time a crime occurs is evidence they were involved in the crime, then defendants would have the same right to claim to a jury that evidence their phone is NOT in the vicinity at the time a crime occurs is evidence they were NOT involved!
This should never be used to gather a list of suspects. It should only be used as potential further proof that someone who was already a suspect was at the location at the time. They don't need tower dragnets for that, they merely need confirmation of the location of individual phones.
What's next, doing tower dragnets even when they know who was involved because they're hoping to find potential witnesses they can force to testify?
In any country.
Yes, you may have caught a bad guy, but in doing so you've violated the right to privacy of hundreds of innocent people.
Everyone in the vicinity automatically becomes a suspect because they passed by the tower.
There's a desperate need for the law around search and seizure without a warrant to include cell phone records. It's there, as this case shows, but not strong enough right now.
Cell phone records should be treated along the same lines as bank records, given their importance in life these days.
If the police asked a bank to divulge the name, account details and bank statements of everyone who visited a bank on a particular day...
...of the particular suspect(s) in question, isn't that the definitive way that investigations are done? Such as seeing where a particular phone number last pinged when authorities attempt to trace a call? Doing these fishing expeditions is even worse of a Constitutional violation than what Trump has already done.
It's maddening that the scum who was elected president while being overwhelmingly convicted of crimes himself is allowed to "chase after criminals" and accuse them of being actors of a foreign state. He's been abusing the Constitution while putting his tiny thumb on the scales of justice. The level of collateral damage that he demands with these dumps would even be viewed as unacceptable in a military operation. You can't have a 99% rate of collateral damage, otherwise you end up becoming Putin's Russia.
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