IP: Re: two from Privacy Digest

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

Date: Fri, 2 Jan 1998 16:02:10 -0500
To: farber () cis upenn edu
From: Jim Dempsey <jdempsey () cdt org>
Subject: IP: two from Privacy Digest


Pieces of the recent thread on wireless phone tracking were forwarded to
me. The following excerpt from testimony I gave in October before the House
Judiciary Subommittee on Crime may be of interest:


"Wireless telephone systems are developing the capability to provide more
refined location information on wireless phone users.  Nonconsensual
government monitoring of location through a wireless phone implicates
privacy interests.   Since wireless telephones are regularly carried into
places where a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy, Congress
should clarify the law by requiring a warrant based on a showing of
probable cause for nonconsensual governmental access to real-time wireless
telephone location information."


The standard for government access to location information was increased in
1994, but still only requires the government to show relevance and
materiality to any ongoing investigation.  CDT supports raising this to a
full probable cause standard, the same standard required to seize the
content of communications under the Fourth Amendment. This recommendation
was first made in a report CDT issued in June of 1997, which was co-signed
by the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, among others.


The trend toward increasingly precise wireless location information
preceded, but was boosted by, the FCC 911 proceeding. Before the article on
the Swiss system, Fortune mag reported earlier in the Fall on a Japanese
development:


> http://pathfinder.com/fortune/digitalwatch/1013dig6.html
>
> The Scariest Phone System
>
> Jealous spouses, bill collectors, and policemen may soon find the world a
> little more to their liking thanks to Personal, the NTT subsidiary
> handling Japan's boom in cheap wireless telephones based on a technology
> called PHS (Personal Handiphone System). Personal is experimenting with a
> site on the Web that allows anyone to locate a phone--and presumably the
> person carrying it--simply by typing in the phone's number.
>
> So far the site is under lock and key because NTT Personal doesn't know
> what to do with the technology. But Fortune got a sneak peek, and it works
> well. Too well. Type in the number of a phone configured with special
> software, and the system locates the phone. What you see is a Web page
> that gives your quarry's precise map coordinates, as well as a description
> of the location--down to the floor of the building the person carrying the
> phone is currently on.


[. . . ]






Jim Dempsey


Center for Democracy and Technology
1634 Eye Street, NW Suite 1100
Washington DC, 20006
voice: 202.637.9800 x112     fax: 202.637.0968


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