Friday, June 13, 2014
11th Circuit makes mixed ruling in cellphone metadata case; what about crime deterrence?
A federal appeals court, the 11th Circuit
in Miami, in the case of U.S. v. Quartavious Davis, has ruled that police
departments and law enforcement agencies need probable cause warrants from
judges to get cellphone location data from telecommunications carriers when
tracking possible suspects. The link for
the opinion is here. As the New York
Times points out, the Court did not overturn the conviction. The NYT calls its stand “A good ruling on
privacy: Cellphone tracking cannot trample the Fourth Amendment”. What’s confounding is that indeed, it seems
that tracking of cell phone locations and license plates (which the LAPD is so
good at) can be very effective in quick apprehensive of perpetrators of both
street and property crimes, providing in time some deterrence. How would this ruling play out in the
Washington DC area, particularly in newly gentrified areas (like around Capitol
Hill and in some of NE) where brazenness of crime seems, at least according to
media reports, to increase. You always
have to wonder where the greatest dangers to your own life come from, in
practice.
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