Privacy

In Major Privacy Win, Supreme Court Rules Police Need Warrant To Track Your Cellphone

In Major Privacy Win, Supreme Court Rules Police Need Warrant To Track Your Cellphone

"In a landmark decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday that police must obtain a search warrant to access an individual's cellphone location information. The 5-4 decision imposes new limits on law enforcement's ability to get at the increasing amount of data that private companies amass in the modern technological age."

"Cellphone providers routinely keep location information for customers to help improve service. And until now, the prevailing legal theory was that if an individual voluntarily shares his information with a third party β€” for instance, by signing up for cellphone service β€” police can get that information without a search warrant."

"Writing for the court majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that cellphone location information is a "near perfect" tool for government surveillance, analogous to an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet. The writers of the Constitution, he said, would certainly have understood that an individual has a privacy interest in the day-to-day, hour-to-hour and even minute-to-minute records of his whereabouts β€” a privacy interest that requires the government to get a search warrant before gaining access to that information."

June 7, 1965 – Griswold v. Connecticut Decided

June 7, 1965 – Griswold v. Connecticut Decided

"Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965),[1] is a landmark case in the United States in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Constitution, through the Bill of Rights, implies a fundamental right to privacy. The case involved a Connecticut "Comstock law" that prohibited any person from using "any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception." By a vote of 7–2, the Supreme Court invalidated the law on the grounds that it violated the "right to marital privacy", establishing the basis for the right to privacy with respect to intimate practices. This and other cases view the right to privacy as a right to "protect[ion] from governmental intrusion."

Although the Bill of Rights does not explicitly mention "privacy", Justice William O. Douglas wrote for the majority that the right was to be found in the "penumbras" and "emanations" of other constitutional protections, such as the self-incrimination clause of the Fifth Amendment. Justice Arthur Goldberg wrote a concurring opinion in which he used the Ninth Amendment in support of the Supreme Court's ruling. Justice Byron White and Justice John Marshall Harlan II wrote concurring opinions in which they argued that privacy is protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment."

Is your candy wrapper tattling on you?

It's not science fiction or CIA technology. It's actually possible now for people to listen into your conversations by using an advanced camera focused on a glass of water or potato chip bag through the windows, recording the tiny sound vibrations in room, and converting it back to sound. Assuming you draw your shades, they might record the vibrations from the shades.