Wilmington Police Lied About Cell Phone Tracking
Last month, Sean O’Sullivan of The News Journal wrote an article about various Delaware police departments tracking cell phones without warrants. When questioning the City of Wilmington, O’Sullivan got this response:
In response to an inquiry from The News Journal last week, Wilmington police spokesman John Rago said the department has “not used GPS tracking in the last four to five years.”
Oops, turns out that was a lie. You see O’Sullivan found out via the prosecution of Melvin Wright and Omar Mitchell that Wilmington Police have been indeed using cellphone data without a warrant at the latest in 2011.
Confronted with this fact, Rago said police and law department officials “incorrectly assumed the question dealt specifically with Vice Unit activity and therefore they did not include input from the Criminal Investigation Division. We apologize for the misunderstanding.”
What’s that smell? That’s the smell of bullshit. Obviously this is what spokespeople do, spin answers to make to make their boss or bosses look good. But their original answer was a lie and their followup is just lame.
Tags: Privacy, Wilmington Policie
Local police and homeland security are constantly using provisions of The Patriot Act during routine law enforcement investigations that have nothing to do with actual homeland security. Of course they won’t talk about it because it’s embarrassing to be caught cheating.
Data gathering on individuals is now being done in fusion centers, which were created by the Patriot Act, I believe. Fusion centers are state-sponsored hubs for intelligence gathering using all available government databases and ominously, private databases. A fusion center would have your government data like tax records, DMV, court appearances, Social Security, disability, Medicare/Medicaid records, subsidized housing, property records, voter registration etc. But it would also have voluminous private data like your credit card history, store loyalty cards, EZ-Pass records, private medical and insurance records, memberships in private organizations, banking records, telephone records, Internet accounts, and more. The extent of the private contributions of your data to government centers is shadowy and unknown.
Delaware of course has its own fusion center, which Delaware Libertarian wrote about some time ago, making the excellent point that we need a law to allow us to find out what the fusion center has on us.
Since I’m down to my last allowable link before I’m moderated, I’ll just post a search link for info about Delaware’s fusion center; check out the first few hits.
And remind me again, why you guys thought electronic medical files in our state was such a great idea?
Simply put Joanne, it’s a tool.. I’m sure at one point in history, those not wearing armor thought to do so was unfair. I’m sure at one point in history, those who’d never faced an archer, thought it was unfair. I’m sure at one point, those facing cannonballs and musket fire for the first time, thought it was unfair…. I’m sure the first time bombs got dropped out of an airplane into trenches, those suffering thought it was unfair…
It is a fait accompli. The genie cannot get back into the bottle.. We have surveillance. And it can be a good thing. If your child was found dead on the ground, and it’s perpetrator was caught through these means, you’d say, “Thank goodness for modern technology.” And the thing is, it is a very effective tool so solve crimes. And the thing is, if you have to wait for days for a judge to say, “ok, i’ll approve it.” you’ve lost the killer.
So….
As with all the above, we developed a defense against the threat, neutralizing it’s impact.
The proper response to this new threat, is to allow lawsuits to the carrier when this information gets misused….
If any private information gets leaked out to your employer, for example, or your nemesis at your employment, you should be allowed to collect on that infraction… in the hundreds of millions.
A fine that high, makes the carrier police itself very carefully, and/or keep record so they know exactly on who to pinpoint the blame if any private information gets leaked out….
It is a shame that your medical records need forms to be shared, but an Internet provider can sell everything it knows about you for $10 dollars….
Make that $100,000,010… and the problem goes away.
Wondering if it was an outright lie or an active omission.
Another lie from John Rago. Lie, active omission–its all the same.
Kind of like when they said the city never intended to take the 62 properties by eminent domain. Thats whu the fought like hell against Dennis Williams great legisaltion which protected property rights and Jack Markell signed into law.
Kavips, why do you hate America?
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