[Joseph Cox at 404 Media]

The contracts and relationships that seemingly allow law enforcement and federal agencies to use private services and data brokers to monitor the activities of American citizens without obtaining a warrant seem to be based on a nudge and a wink. 404 Media obtained an email which admitted that the Secret Service never checked to make sure users had consented to tracking:

"The email undermines the Secret Service’s and other U.S. federal agencies' justification that monitoring the movements of phones with commercially available location data without a warrant is possible because people allegedly agreed to the terms of services of ordinary apps that may collect it."

Even if users had consented to tracking by the app, it's highly unlikely that they consented to tracking by the Secret Service. Regardless of whether they checked or not, I have questions about whether this should be allowable: we have an expectation of privacy, particularly given our Constitutional rights, and using private services to obtain this information has always felt like a dirty loophole. Those services, of course, should also not be performing this kind of tracking.

Wouldn't it be nice if we had effective privacy protections that upheld our rights according to their spirit rather than our current cynically-interpreted letter of the law?

#Democracy

[Link]