Imagine you are in the middle of your typical day-to-day activities. Maybe you are driving, spending time with family, or working. If you are like most people, your phone is at your side on a daily basis. Little do you know that, at any time, police and law enforcement could be looking at information stored on your phone. You haven’t done anything wrong. You haven’t been asked for permission. You aren’t suspected of any crime.
Police have the power to collect your location along with the numbers of your incoming and outgoing calls and intercept the content of call and text communication. They can do all of this without you ever knowing about it.
How? They use a shoebox-sized device called a StingRay. This device (also called an IMSI catcher)
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Signals are sent into the homes, bags, and pockets of innocent individuals. The Electronic Frontier Foundation likens this to the Pre-Revolutionary War practice of soldiers going door-to-door, searching without suspicion.
Richard Tynan, a technologist with Privacy International notes that, “there really isn’t any place for innocent people to hide from a device such as this.”
The StingRay clearly violates [4th Amendment] standards. The drafters of the Constitution recognized that restricting the government from violating privacy is essential for a free society. That’s why the Fourth Amendment exists. The StingRay is creating a dangerous precedent that tells the government that it’s okay for them to violate our rights. Because of this, freedom is quietly slipping out the window.
Law Enforcement is using StingRays without a warrant in most cases. For example, the San Bernardino Police Department used their StingRay 300 times without a warrant in a little over a year.
In 2010, the Tallahassee Police Department used a StingRay in a warrantless search to track down the suspect of a crime. A testimony from an unsealed hearing transcript talks about how police went about finding their target. The ACLU sums it up
5 Ways You Give The Government Control” written by Kenneth Coats shows how the devices we use daily slowly take over individuals lives. Coats states, “Today, most people in the United States carry a mobile phone that accompanies them wherever they go. We use them for everything...This essentially makes them the perfect tracking and bugging devices”. Although electronic devices are known to be safe, they allow outside people to figure out individuals personal life. Due to the need for devices such as cell phones, each individual has a high chance of being socially stalked once in their lifetime. Coats then states, “Not only do intelligence agencies gather information via mobile companies, but… your phone can be hacked using spyware. Even if your phone is turned off, it can be remotely accessed to recorded conversations and take photographs”. This issue causes a panic due to the wide spread of inappropriate pictures and private conversations in one's life. Even though technology is viewed as a privileged, it is also taking away people's lives without their
Is anyone’s private information contained in their cell phone actually private? Are appointments, bank information, conversations, the user’s location or other sensitive personal information truly confidential? Is there a Big Brother watching? There is no definitive answer to any of these questions. From the beginning of time to now, privacy has become more and more scarce. Through new developments in technology, it is hard to believe that someone is not watching your move at any given moment. The government’s job is to keep Americans safe, but where is the line drawn? Where is the difference between having a reasonable doubt and accessing information solely because these government officials have the power to do so? The government has infringed upon the rights of the American people when it comes to this topic.
The use of surveillance is becoming increasingly evident around the world. Surveillance is carried out in many different forms from simple methods such as video surveillance to more complex methods such as call and browser monitoring. Although it might seem that surveillance is undeniably convenient when pursuing a criminal or preventing a terrorist attack, it is often misused and many are beginning to question why there
Expansion has occurred throughout the policing system through the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment states that a police officer cannot perform an illegal search and seizure without a warrant and probable cause (Peak, 2017, p.191). Police officers have expanded their methods such that they do not break the Constitutional rights of the people, but are able to get evidence of probable cause (Sekhon, 2017, p. 74). Police searching cars due to probable cause are an example of this exception. If someone is suspected of drunk driving, the police have a reason to check the car and the person’s sobriety (Sekhon, 2017, p. 71). With the Fourth Amendment, if a person shares information with another or someone that might be considered a third-party, the police may use this information (Crocker, 2013, p. 686). The usage of this information does not technically break the Constitutional rights of the people, therefore is an accepted method (Crocker, 2013, p. 686). Technological advances also make this amendment apply to the expansion of policing methods in more subtle ways (Crocker, 2013, p. 687). GPS tracking and surveillance are both methods used that shows the expansion of policing
Surveillance is not a new thing. In fact, espionage, tracking, and sleuthing were part of society ever since 5000 B.C. But in the rise of the modern era, the idea of surveillance in the public eye serves as a controversial topic of discussion. People everywhere complain about the existence of security cameras, government tracking, and the right to privacy. Such problems, however, are not due to the sudden discovery of surveillance, but the modern abuse of it. Seeing the disastrous effects of over surveillance from George Orwell’s 1984, the public rightfully fears societal deterioration through modern surveillance abuse portrayed in Matthew Hutson’s “Even Bugs Will Be Bugged” and the effects of such in Jennifer Golbeck’s “All Eyes On You”. The abuse of surveillance induces the fear of discovery through the invasion of privacy, and ensures the omnipresence of one’s past that haunt future endeavors, to ultimately obstruct human development and the progress of society overall.
In past law enforcers could pull phone information without probable cause which means telecommunications industry used to be more cooperative with law enforcement. But now there have been many changes. Knutson, Gryta, Barrett (2014) write on the article that AT&T Inc. said federal investigators might need a warrant to gather data about cellphone user’s location, challenging the more permissive legal framework the government has used for year. This means law enforcers will need probable cause to get warrant from a judge before pulling phone records from carriers like AT&T. Although phone records helps to locate suspects and gather evidences, pulling
Among the most precious information in criminal inquiries is the location of suspects, and when it comes to location records captured by smartphones, court rulings have also been inconsistent. Privacy advocates
Whenever a call is made, phone companies record the who, what, when, and how long of
Affirmative didn’t seem to understand that there are much worse problems that supposedly deprive people with the right to privacy and as we clearly stated multiple times, once the criminal or wanted subject is connected to the stingray, all other connected devices will be let go. They verbalized that the stingray collects data from everyone and tracks their cellphones but, again those cellphones that have been seized that are aren’t wanted are soon released. They then brought forward the following piece of evidence “ This lack of concern for the Fourth Amendment-which requires reasonable suspicion that you're up to something illegal before the police conduct surveillance on you” Yes, we know what the Fourth Amendment requires and the law enforcement knows too. They don’t break the law when they conduct surveillance on people who look suspicious! All that we are getting from this claim that the affirmative is portraying is that they are willing to give up our safety for the small amount of privacy that we are given. Affirmative brought up racial profiling in contention two. They proposed the notion that stingray devices help boost the idea of
According to the U.S. Constitution Fourth Amendment, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized” (US Const. amend. IV). Based on this amendment, the officers should obtain a search warrant before they got to the local cell phone carrier and asked their help to “clone” Mr. Doe’s cell phone. When Mr. Doe sent his messages and received messages from others, he definitely expected those information were his privacy and without his permission, others should not
Every citizen has a fundamental right to privacy and this is enshrined in the constitution. The event of losing privacy is a chilling experience similar to being laid naked in public. This situation mainly occurs when police arrests a suspect and searching everything, even the unnecessary private belongings in the name of conducting investigations. The common intrusion to personal information nowadays is seizure of cell phone by the police in arrest cases (Stephens et al. 31). The awareness of ones right to privacy and
The NSA’s wiretapping program is still in use today and in fact, the issue of its legality has hit a plateau. While the program is praised for its use to prevent attacks and ensure safety, it’s often criticized for its questionable practices and its ties to the Fourth Amendment. However, average Americans such as you and
Through these telescreens, the Thought Police- government force working for Big Brother- arrest citizens who they think might be joining the Brotherhood- the resistance fighting against Big Brother. This type of technology forms the basis for the technology used in the 21st century.
Government surveillance in the past was not a big threat due to the limitations on technology; however, in the current day, it has become an immense power for the government. Taylor, author of a book on Electronic Surveillance supports, "A generation ago, when records were tucked away on paper in manila folders, there was some assurance that such information wouldn 't be spread everywhere. Now, however, our life stories are available at the push of a button" (Taylor 111). With more and more Americans logging into social media cites and using text-messaging devices, the more providers of metadata the government has. In her journal “The Virtuous Spy: Privacy as an Ethical Limit”, Anita L. Allen, an expert on privacy law, writes, “Contemporary technologies of data collection make secret, privacy invading surveillance easy and nearly irresistible. For every technology of confidential personal communication…there are one or more counter-technologies of eavesdropping” (Allen 1). Being in the middle of the Digital Age, we have to be much more careful of the kinds of information we put in our digital devices.
It was a time when the FBI, police, and overall government was corrupt. They could monitor not only one’s phone but all other smart devices including cars and televisions whenever they wanted. This was exactly the problem one night in San Antonio Texas.