Mobile Tracking Would Be Great, If It Weren’t Illegal. (What, Everything Has To Be Perfect With You?)
Written by Mark RaschHere, it is illegal to intercept the contents of a cell phone call or to force a cell phone provider to pony up information about a user without—at a minimum—a court order based upon a certification by a law enforcement or other official that the information is relevant to an ongoing criminal (or sometimes intelligence) case, writes Legal Columnist—and former federal prosecutor—Mark Rasch. The federal pen register law makes it a crime to "install or use a pen register or trap and trace device" without such a court order, unless you are a "provider of electronic or wire communication service" and your use of the pen register is for certain limited purposes. There is little doubt that neither a mobile nor a mall operator would be considered a "provider of electronic communication services."
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3 Comments | Read Mobile Tracking Would Be Great, If It Weren’t Illegal. (What, Everything Has To Be Perfect With You?)
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November 23rd, 2011 at 10:40 am
Malls track shoppers…. It’s here…. street level data mining. Why should this information be confined to mega mall owners? I get it… personal privacy is gone…. But if our privacy as human beings is traceable by the UI of our cell phones… (And it is) all of us being tracked should have the information available. Street level data mining is very powerful, profitable and scary. A community consciousness needs to be implemented now. Large conglomerates collecting data on an individual bases and collectively leveraging our very movements for their own agendas… is simply exploitation.
November 28th, 2011 at 11:31 am
You have chosen an unfortunate example of “the person hanging around outside the Victoria’s Secret dressing room was your 70-year-old neighbor.” That is probably a reason why most people would AGREE that this kind of surveillance is necessary.
Why not make an argument using an example of someone doing something completely innocuous? Such as: “it is a trivial task to cross reference the cell phone data with the payment data and send a message to Store B that someone who just spent $1000 at Store A just walked in their door.”
February 8th, 2012 at 10:11 am
Mobile tracking isn’t necessarily illegal. You can track your family or vehicles to ensure their safety.