Why We Listen
By PHILIP BOBBITT
London
IN the debate over whether the National Security Agency's eavesdropping violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, we must not lose sight of the fact that the world we entered on 9/11 will require rewriting that statute and other laws. The tiresome pas de deux between rigid civil libertarians in denial of reality and an overaggressive executive branch seemingly heedless of the law, while comforting to partisans of both groups, is not in the national interest.
This one is from the free section of the New York Times. The opening paragraph is an example of the false "balance" Paul Krugman decries in the pay section.
The title is significant because the author is a Brit (I am sooooo tempted to use xenophobe code words here, but I'll pass for the moment). England has been deep into public surveillance for years...so deep that this year they're implementing a system that will track the movements of every car in the country, in real time.
UK will be first to monitor every car journey
By Steve Connor 26 December 2005
Britain is to become the first country in the world where the movements of all vehicles on the roads are recorded. A new national surveillance system will hold the records for at least two years.
Using a network of cameras that can automatically read every passing number plate, the plan is to build a huge database of vehicle movements so that the police and security services can analyse any journey a driver has made over several years.
The network will incorporate thousands of existing CCTV cameras which are being converted to read number plates automatically night and day to provide 24/7 coverage of all motorways and main roads, as well as towns, cities, ports and petrol-station forecourts.
By next March a central database installed alongside the Police National Computer in Hendon, north London, will store the details of 35 million number-plate "reads" per day. These will include time, date and precise location, with camera sites monitored by global positioning satellites.
Already there are plans to extend the database by increasing the storage period to five years and by linking thousands of additional cameras so that details of up to 100 million number plates can be fed each day into the central databank.
Trust me, this sort of system is in the works for the USofA. The major obstacle is the sheer size of the country, as opposed to teeny tiny little England. Don't worry, though...as usual, American Technology saves the day.
December 21, 2005
Yesterday, Magistrate Judge Gorenstein of the federal court for the Southern District of New York issued an opinion permitting the government to use cell site data to track a cell phone's physical location, without the government having to obtain a search warrant based on probable cause.
Judge Gorenstein's flawed legal analysis is in sharp contrast to three other federal court opinions strongly rejecting the government’s legal arguments, including a decision by Magistrate Judge Orenstein in the Eastern District of New York. While Judge Orenstein referred to the government's legal arguments variously as "unsupported," "misleading," and "contrived," and a Texas court called the convolutions of the government’s theory “perverse” and likened its twists and turns to a "three-rail bank shot," Judge Gorenstein bought the government's arguments hook, line and sinker.
Unfortunately, this dangerous new opinion falls into a procedural black hole. Because the DOJ is the only party in these surveillance cases, there's no one left to appeal the decision. Meanwhile, the DOJ has refused to appeal all three times it has lost, despite emphatic requests by the Texas and Eastern District magistrates. The result is that other magistrates across the country won't get clear guidance from the appeals courts on this issue.
That's why EFF will continue to follow this issue closely, and continue to urge other magistrates who face this question to follow the clear and convincing logic of the three courageous judges who stood up for civil liberties and said no to warrantless cell phone tracking.
P.S. The DOJ’s practice of monitoring cell phone location without probable cause previously inspired us to ask: "What other new surveillance powers has the government been creating out of whole cloth and how long have they been getting away with it?" Recent revelations about President Bush authorizing warrantless wiretaps of Americans by the National Security Agency have given us the beginnings of an answer. Let's hope that's not just the tip of the surveillance iceberg.
This will be great...we already have a major head start with all the cars eqipped with OnStar...all cell-phone equipped and so all immediately trackable. Much cheaper, and people voluntarily carry the tracker. No need for those camera thingies and best of all, no government bill. YOU pay for it when you buy your car. And of course there's the cell phone in your pocket...we get to follow you to that tryst with your co-worker as a side effect of tracking cars. Because your co-worker's cousin lent a cell phone to a guy who is related to a student that studied the Middle East with a foreign exchange student whose uncle was in the Iraq military makes her a person of interest.
