Good News: Obama Wants to Track Your Cell Phone

Note to self: Say nothing bad about King Obama while chatting on the cell phone.

Even though police are tapping into the locations of mobile phones thousands of times a year, the legal ground rules remain unclear, and federal privacy laws written a generation ago are ambiguous at best. On Friday, the first federal appeals court to consider the topic will hear oral arguments (PDF) in a case that could establish new standards for locating wireless devices.

In that case, the Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in their--or at least their cell phones'--whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that "a customer's Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records" that show where a mobile device placed and received calls.

For years the left shrieked about supposed "warrentless wiretapping" of phone calls involving terror suspects. It will be curious to see the reaction of the Obamatons to this.

I noticed this gem in the comments.

by n3td3v February 11, 2010 6:55 AM PST

Yes, let's release GPS location data of all CIA agents on the day of 9/11 before and after the event.