{"id":14896,"date":"2012-08-16T00:10:15","date_gmt":"2012-08-15T23:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=14896"},"modified":"2012-08-16T00:10:15","modified_gmt":"2012-08-15T23:10:15","slug":"american-civil-liberties-union-file-legal-complaint-against-the-fbi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/american-civil-liberties-union-file-legal-complaint-against-the-fbi\/","title":{"rendered":"American Civil Liberties Union file legal complaint against the FBI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thomas Hawk<\/a>\u00a0|<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a formal legal complaint against the FBI in an attempt to compel the agency to release two GPS tracking-related memos.<\/p>\n

In July, the ACLU requested two memos under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that the FBI wrote in February. The memos came as a result of the Supreme Court decision in the\u00a0Jones v. United States<\/a><\/em>\u00a0case, which established that the government had no right to place a GPS tracking device without a warrant on a suspect\u2019s car.<\/p>\n

However, other types of high-tech surveillance and monitoring continues by law enforcement on a nearly daily basis around the country. Cops are using everything from tap and trace,\u00a0ping data<\/a>,license plate surveillance<\/a>, and other techniques as a way to keep tabs on suspects and innocent citizens without going through the threshold of a judicially reviewed probable-cause-driven warrant.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe still have no idea what the FBI is doing in terms of tracking, post-Jones<\/em>,\u201d said\u00a0Catherine Crump<\/a>, the author of the Complaint for Injunctive Relief, and an attorney at the ACLU, in an interview with Ars.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf all\u00a0Jones<\/em>\u00a0means is that law enforcement agents have to track you through your phone instead of your car, it\u2019s not going to mean much in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the unanimous decision by the Supreme Court in January 2012 in the\u00a0Jones\u00a0<\/em>case, legal scholars seem to now have more questions than answers.<\/p>\n

“One question I have is whether the FBI is treating\u00a0Jones<\/em>\u00a0as relevant to surveillance technologies that don\u2019t require physical attachment to individuals or vehicles,” wrote\u00a0Woodrow Hartzog<\/a>, a law professor at Samford University in Alabama, in an e-mail sent to Ars.<\/p>\n

“For example, does the FBI think that\u00a0Jones<\/em>\u00a0has relevance to facial and object recognition technologies deployed in public places? What about license plate readers? While the concurring opinions in\u00a0Jones<\/em>\u00a0certainly questioned certain concepts such as the third-party doctrine and the idea of no privacy in public, the case was actually decided by the majority on much narrower, trespass-based grounds. I\u2019d be interested to see if these guides are concerned primarily with the attachment and use of GPS devices, or whether they are mindful of the concurring opinions\u2019 skepticism of the proposition that there can be no privacy at all in public spaces or in information that is shared with others. In a sense,\u00a0Jones<\/em>\u00a0punted on some of the larger privacy issues surrounding modern surveillance technologies.”<\/p>\n

Up next: GPS tracking of your boat?<\/h2>\n

The ACLU first caught wind of the two FBI memos in question after hearing\u00a0FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann speak at a legal conference<\/a>\u00a0in San Francisco in February 2012.<\/p>\n

In a 12-minute video posted online, Weissmann spoke about two memos: one focused on the use of GPS tracking on forms of transportation beyond cars, the other speaking on how\u00a0Jones<\/em>\u00a0applies to tracking methods outside of GPS (presumably like cellphone ping data).<\/p>\n

\u201cIs it going to apply to boats, is it going to apply to airplanes?\u201d Weissmann asks in the video. \u201cIs it going to apply at the border? What\u2019s it mean for the consent that\u2019s given by an owner? What does it mean if consent is given by a possessor? And this is all about GPS, by the way, without getting into other types of techniques.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ACLU is not the first group to compel the FBI to release these memos. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has also been working on their publication as well, according to\u00a0Mark Rumold<\/a>, a staff attorney at the EFF.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would just like to know how the government interprets the Supreme Court\u2019s opinion,\u201d Rumold told Ars. \u201cFundamentally, that\u2019s the type of information that can\u2019t be withheld under FOIA. The government\u2019s interpretation of rules and laws that affect the general public\u2013that’s a fundamental precept, that secret law is an abomination.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thomas Hawk\u00a0| On Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a formal legal complaint against the FBI in an attempt to compel the agency to release two GPS tracking-related memos. In July, the ACLU requested two memos under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that the FBI wrote in February. The memos came as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1614,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14896","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-surveillance-big-brother","7":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14896\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}