GPS Cells and Jumping the FISA/Telecom Shark.

I gotta agree with Nick Beaudrot at Cogitamus. This is a dumb battle.

Kevin Drum picks up the story from TChris at the Big Tent of Perpetual Outrage that the ACLU and the EFF folks have filed a FOIA suit to find out if and when and how often the government has used the GPS tracking information in your cell phone to monitor our locations.

(Okay, if that's too many abbreviations for you, then don't worry, you don't need to care.)

It's like this. Every modern cell phone has a little GPS transmitter (or something) and they can triangulate your position between cell towers (I guess). The ACLU and EFF and Kevin Drum want them to get warrants to find out -- where you are.

Drum must be a bit punchy from all the FISA/TeleGiant fighting lately, because frankly, he's better than this.

That cell phone tracking should indeed require a warrant hardly seems disputable. That the Department of Justice refuses to explain its policies hardly seems defensible. Good luck to the ACLU and the EFF.

Uhhm, nope.

It's not only disputable, it's dismissible and defensible.

Now just calm down and think for a minute.

• They could follow you without a warrant.
• They could ring your doorbell to see if you answer without a warrant.
• They can set up a stake out across your street and monitor your coming and going without a warrant.
• They can check your garbage and find out where you picked up the take out you had for dinner without a warrant.

If you leave your home, you are by definition "out in public." Where's the expectation of privacy when you are in public? If you're not out in public, you must be at home or where-ever you went when you left home and went out in public to get there.

Location is a status, not a thing to be seized or a conversation that can be intercepted. You don't need a warrant to find out someone's status: alive or dead, male or female, felon or clean record, physical description, valid or suspended license -- home or roaming the public streets.

If you do have an expectation of privacy when you are traveling around, in public, then you must be sneaking around -- so ditch the phone with the fancy chip in it that is probably eating your brain anyway.

Your Blog Soon To Get More Readers

For those who see a rise in their hit-counter as a measure of their virility, this news should get you sweaty all under:

The federal government should be able to read all communications on the Internet, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell said during a New Yorker interview.

Lawrence Wright, who interviewed McConnell for a piece in this week's issue, said that McConnell has developed a cyber security policy that would include such a provision, but President George W. Bush has not announced it yet.

Anyone concerned with basic privacy, like their email, purchasing records, banking practices, or search queries, might have a different take than the average flattered blogger typing into the ether, hoping for a comment or two that confirms they aren't just writing to themselves.

Actually, I'm kinda miffed to think that some disgruntled nerd at Homeland Security surfing for chuckles hasn't already been reading my stuff. Hi Charlie! How's the old lady?

(h/t DU)