Wired - Two lawmakers announced legislation Wednesday that for the first time would explicitly require authorities to obtain a court warrant to get geolocational information on a suspect’s movements. It’s a position clearly at odds with the Obama administration.
The “Geolocational Privacy and Surveillance Act” (.pdf) comes amid a hodgepodge of conflicting court rulings (.pdf) about whether such data — obtained from mobile phones, hidden trackers affixed to vehicles, navigation devices and laptops — should be protected by the Fourth Amendment.
The proposal by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) comes nearly three months after the Obama administration petitioned the Supreme Court to allow the government, without a court warrant, to secretly install GPS devices on suspects’ vehicles to track their every move. The pending petition, if accepted by the justices, arguably would make it the biggest Fourth Amendment case in a decade — one weighing the collision of privacy, technology and the Constitution. More
