They need to stop nibbling at the edges, otherwise law enforcement will continue to play the game of the 3 year old challenging the borders set up to them by their parents…..well what about this? Well, you said no to that, what about this?

Until that happens, and it looks unlikely, this idiocy will continue.

You will never be able to stop the tech, it will grow stronger and stronger, faster and faster until it is seamless and the potential for abuse of power will become absolute. Because that is the nature of power and those who control it will justify its use, legal or not. SEE: FBI, DOJ, FISA etc.

Then what?

In this day and age it is nearly impossible to not have to share sensitive data with 3rd parties, unless you want to live in a cabin in the Montana sticks. Because of this 3rd party data should be treated no differently than your ‘papers’ are for the 4th amendment.

In the end the law must always defer to the individuals freedoms and rights.

Don’t pick and chose which technologies are illegal, but draw a clear line which makes technology involved completely irrelevant.

At one level law enforcement wants to know if someone is inside of where ever they are looking for what ever reason and that could be argued as a safety concern, but where do your rights end if they come looking for you purposefully or incidentally?

And the law related to technology and the individuals rights will probably always be behind the curve as to legality.

The more problematic issues will come to fore when interferometry technology moves beyond requiring a supercomputer on hand to use, as that will use your household wifi and interference patterns in the signal to “search” your house, however, it’s using signals being broadcast from within the walls of the house.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/01/19/police-radar-see-through-walls/22007615/

If you don’t know the science involved in a subject, leave it alone.

The headline about this decision in USA Today includes a quote from Chief Justice Roberts: “What does the Fourth Amendment mean when you can, through technology, literally see through walls with heat imaging?”

As I just got done demonstrating to several high school physics classes, infrared cannot see through walls, it’s basic physics. Stick to law, and leave science to those who understand it.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?435649-1/supreme-court-police-warrant-track-cell-phone-location

This is rather troubling. A reverence for law and order should not come at the expense of an all powerful law enforcement which goes against another bedrock conservative (and used to be American) value of limited government and checks and balances to prevent government abuse of power.

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.

All the cell-phone carriers sell real-time GPS phone location services to 3rd party vendors, who in turn service business such as banks, trucking firms, car rental agencies, etc. (banks like it as a fraud screen.)

Depending on who you are talking with, (or where you work) you may or may not have consented to real-time GPS location screens being done on your phone.

>I’d reference a WSJ article this week on this very subject, (prior to the Ruling) but it’s behind a pay wall.
In brief; 4 large carriers are terminating some of those location-data services, with certain vendors who were accused of violating privacy-provisions. In particular, one vendor had set up a web-service utilized by the police, to track cell phone locations for people calling into jails/prisons.

The Phone Company, always know where your “phone number” is physically located, and which other numbers are associated with it. They can’t bill you unless they keep track, and have been doing so since day one in the Phone world.
Which is why we have historically protected such data from government intrusion, via a Warrant.
Concurrently however, the Phone System is all common-carrier, and it’s still regulated to death, make no mistake.