-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Rejected posting to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: 18 Aug 2000 18:38:20 -0000
From: "Oscar " <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Mon, 14 Aug 2000 23:51:29 -0500 (CDT) Michael Eisenscher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
From: radman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2000 15:09:08 -0700
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: CELL PHONE RULE GIVES POLICE UNTOLD POWERS
PRIVACY GROUPS SAY CELL PHONE
RULE GIVES POLICE UNTOLD POWERS
By Eric Rosenberg
HEARST NEWSPAPERS
Washington � In what privacy rights advocates say is
a significant threat to civil liberties in the digital
age, law enforcement agencies may soon be able to turn
the cellular phone into a ready-made tool for nosing
around in private lives.
If a federal rule stands up to a court challenge here,
the FBI and local police will be allowed to track a cell
phone user's location or monitor bank and data transactions
made with the device � without the need for a court-ordered
wiretap.
Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the American
Civil Liberties Union in New York, said the rule was the
equivalent of ''putting a peep hole in a every new home
through which law enforcement can look. {It} ''means that
cell phones become location-tracking devices, which can
be used to monitor our movements.''
Nearly 100 million Americans use cell phones and an
ever-increasing amount of communications and commerce �
including Internet activity � is conducted over cellular
phones.
David Sobel, general counsel for the Electronic Privacy
Information Center, a watchdog group, said the government
is ''seeking surveillance capabilities that far exceed
the powers law enforcement has had in the past and is
entitled to under the law,'' he added.
Shari Steele, executive director of the Electronic
Frontier Foundation, a privacy oversight group based in
San Francisco, said that the proposed rule is ''a really,
really big grab'' to expand government's investigative
powers.
Under current federal rules, if investigators want to
tap a phone, either a cell phone or a regular one, they
must get permission from a judge. As part of the petition
for a wiretap warrant, the agency must provide the court
with evidence of probable cause that the suspect whose
phone is to be tapped is engaged in a crime.
But under the new rule, law enforcement would gain the
additional power to track the approximate location of a
cell phone user without having to ask a judge. ''That
gives them a tremendous amount of power they didn't have
before,'' Steele said.
The technology exists to allow investigators to
determine the general location of a cell phone user. The
country is divided into ''cells'' several miles wide that
provide service for cell phone users. By knowing in what
cell a call begins and ends, investigators glean a fairly
good understanding of a user's movements.
The government disagrees with the privacy critics,
asserting that law enforcement agencies need to be able
to monitor cell phones in order to keep pace with
criminals, who are increasingly turning to the devices
and to the Internet to conduct illicit dealings.
The Justice Department said in a court filing in
Washington that privacy interests ''are adequately
protected'' under the rule.
Meanwhile, the use of wiretaps is surging. In 1999,
the number of wiretaps ordered by federal and local
authorities on pagers, cell phones, e-mail and faxes
increased about 20 percent over the previous year,
pushing the total number of government wiretaps to a
record 1,350, according to the Administrative Office of
the U.S. Courts. The Justice
Department accounted for 601 of the court-approved
wiretaps.
About three-quarters of the wiretaps were used in
drug investigations.
In one high-profile case last year, federal agents
arrested 98 people in a drug-smuggling ring stretching
from El Paso to the Northeast. The arrests in part were
facilitated by the use of a 'roving wiretap'' to track
the use of several cell phones used in drug transactions.
The FBI recently ran headlong into a major controversy
over another digital-age eavesdropping capability known
as Carnivore. Carnivore scans the Internet and captures
''packets,'' the standard unit of digital communication
that the FBI also is seeking in the cell phone rule.
Carnivore, which would be installed at Internet
service providers like America Online, scours the on-line
activities of a suspect. Members of Congress and privacy
groups, outraged that the device gives the FBI access to
the entirety of the Internet provider's electronic traffic,
assert that the system is rife for potential abuse.
At issue in the cell phone case is a proposed Federal
Communications Commission regulation issued at the behest
of the Justice Department nearly one year ago. It directed
that by Sept. 30, 2001, cellular phone companies must be
able to provide authorities with the general location
of cellular phone users. Under the order, the police may
obtain location information based where a call originated
and ended.
In addition, the rule directs that cell phone companies
create eavesdropping-friendly networks for investigators.
Without the need for a wiretap warrant, the government
wants:
� To be able to capture in real time the digits that
a cell phone user dials after a call is connected, such
as call-forwarding telephone numbers or digits used to
access credit card and bank accounts;
� To be able to capture so-called ''packet-mode
communications,'' which contain the content of a telephone
call or data transmission broken down into electronic
chunks.
The actions ''will help ensure that law enforcement
has the most up-to-date technology to fight crime,'' FCC
Chairman Bill Kennard said.
But a coalition of privacy rights organizations and
cellular industry associations, including those mentioned
above, is fighting the rule in U.S Court of Appeals for
the District of Columbia. A ruling could come as soon as
this month.
The groups argue that under the proposed rule the
''packets'' containing the actual content of a call could
be easily accessed by investigators without a formal
wiretap warrant.
Theodore Olson, a lawyer who represents the Cellular
Telecommunications Industry Association and Center for
Democracy and Technology, said,
''Our objection is that the FCC wants the telephone
companies to provide information to law enforcement
involving content � without a wiretap'' order.
''Law enforcement would get a lot of content under this.
They don't get it all, but they'd get a lot,'' Olson said.
The government counters that the concerns of privacy
groups are overstated.
The FCC said in written arguments filed with the court
that there should be no concern about using cell phones
to obtain the location of suspects.
''Information revealing the approximate location of
wireless callers ... is no different from the location
information that results from the detection of a telephone
number in the landline system,'' the agency said.
Stephen Colgate, an assistant U.S. attorney general,
added in an interview that investigators have no intention
of turning ''cell phones into a real-time homing devices.''
To do so, he said, would require a court-ordered wiretap,
and would only be done if absolutely necessary. He cited
the example of tracking the movements of a suspected
kidnapper.
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