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For more than a year, federal authorities pursued a man they called simply "the Hacker." Only after using a little known cellphone-tracking device—a stingray—were they able to zero in on a California home and make the arrest. Stingrays are designed to locate a mobile phone even when it's not being used to make a call. The Federal Bureau of Investigation considers the devices to be so critical that it has a policy of deleting the data gathered in their use, mainly to keep suspects in the dark about their capabilities, an FBI official told The Wall Street Journal in response...

In its relentless never-ending quest for more power to track and follow American citizens through their cellphones, the Department of Justice (DoJ) requested last week that Congress give them easier access to location data stored by cellphone service providers. Jason Weinstein, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s criminal division, argued that requiring a search warrant to gain such access would “cripple” his department’s efforts to investigate crime and criminals. Said Weinstein, There is really no fairness and no justice when the law applies differently to different people depending on which courthouse you’re sitting in. For that...

The ACLU has released documents that show that in the last two years the US Department of Justice has conducted more warrantless electronic surveillance, involving spying on telephones, email and Facebook accounts, than in the preceding decade. The American Civil Liberties and Union (ACLU) reports that the documents handed over after months of litigation include the attorney general’s 2010 and 2011 reports covering use of “pen register” and “trap and trace” surveillance powers. The documents, according to the ACLU, shows a sharp increase in the use of surveillance tools such as telephone, email, and other Internet communications. The ACLU observed...

A Justice Department document obtained by the ACLU of Northern California shows that federal investigators were routinely using a sophisticated cell phone tracking tool known as a "stingray," but hiding that fact from federal magistrate judges when asking for permission to do so. Stingrays and similar devices essentially impersonate cell phone towers, allowing them to pinpoint the precise location of targeted cell phones (even inside people's homes) and intercept conversations. They also sweep up the data of innocent people who happen to be nearby. By withholding information about this technology from courts in applications for electronic surveillance orders, the federal...

Ruling that federal agents erred in attaching a satellite tracking device to a vehicle without a search warrant, a federal appeals court has reversed the life sentence of man accused of running a major Washington drug ring. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Friday found that the government's use of GPS technology to track defendant Antoine Jones' Jeep violated the Fourth Amendment. Civil liberties groups that aided in the appeal of Mr. Jones, whose case involved the largest cocaine seizure in city history, called the ruling an important legal victory for privacy rights....

Big Brother has been outsourced. The police can find out where you are, where you’ve been, even where you’re going. All thanks to that handy little human tracking device in your pocket: your cellphone.  There are 331 million cellphone subscriptions—about 20 million more than there are residents—in the United States. Nearly 90 percent of adult Americans carry at least one phone. The phones communicate via a nationwide network of nearly 300,000 cell towers and 600,000 micro sites, which perform the same function as towers. When they are turned on, they ping these nodes once every seven seconds or so, registering...

Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated the life sentence of a Washington area man named Antoine Jones, saying the government violated Jones’ privacy rights in clandestinely tracking his movement for a month in a drug trafficking investigation.

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway - and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements. That is the bizarre - and scary - rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government...

You might think that police or other federal authorities would need to obtain a court order to be able to place a GPS tracking device on your vehicle. That court order is apparently not needed according to the Obama administration. This is despite the fact that the Supreme Court ruled last year that attaching GPS devices to the vehicles of citizens amounted to search protected by the Constitution.

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that police must get a search warrant before using GPS technology to track criminal suspects. The decision was a defeat for the government and police agencies, and it raises the possibility of serious complications for law enforcement nationwide, which increasingly relies on high tech surveillance of suspects, including the use of various types of GPS technology. --snip-- "The use of longer term GPS monitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on expectations of privacy," Alito wrote in an opinion joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan. Sotomayor in her concurring...

<p>The Obama administration says that it has the right to attach a GPS unit to your vehicle and watch where you go, with whom you meet, where your children visit friends, whether you go to church or a bar or a bank – all in the hope that investigators could develop the "probable cause" they would need to get a formal court order to search you and your possessions.</p>

THIS spring was a rough season for the Fourth Amendment. The Obama administration petitioned the Supreme Court to allow GPS tracking of vehicles without judicial permission. The Supreme Court ruled that the police could break into a house without a search warrant if, after knocking and announcing themselves, they heard what sounded like evidence being destroyed. Then it refused to see a Fourth Amendment violation where a citizen was jailed for 16 days on the false pretext that he was being held as a material witness to a crime. In addition, Congress renewed Patriot Act provisions on enhanced surveillance powers...

MADISON, Wis. - Wisconsin police can attach GPS to cars to secretly track anybody's movements without obtaining search warrants, an appeals court ruled Thursday. However, the District 4 Court of Appeals said it was "more than a little troubled" by that conclusion and asked Wisconsin lawmakers to regulate GPS use to protect against abuse by police and private individuals. As the law currently stands, the court said police can mount GPS on cars to track people without violating their constitutional rights -- even if the drivers aren't suspects. Officers do not need to get warrants beforehand because GPS tracking does...

Helicopter parents. It's the scornful label some give to parents who seem to hover over their kids, unwilling to trust them to handle even the simplest situation on their own. But in the age of GPS, parents no longer need to do the hovering themselves. Parents can be nosier than they ever thought possible, for a price. Helicopter parents, meet satellite parents. What were once the tracking tools of spies and private investigators are now being offered to mainstream America, specifically parents who want to keep constant track of their kids in real time. Already, millions of families have discovered...

Paige White was surprised when her parents figured out soon after she started driving last year that she'd gone 9 miles to a party, not 4 miles to the friend's house she'd told them she was visiting. It seemed to her almost as if her car was bugged. It was. Paige's parents had installed a device in their daughter's SUV that can tell them not only how far she's driven, but how fast and whether she's made any sudden stops or hard turns. "I was kind of mad because I felt it was an invasion of my privacy," said the...

When the Town of Babylon installed global positioning system technology in most of its fleet of 250 vehicles in January, officials touted it as a way to improve efficiency, particularly during emergencies such as snowstorms. However, the system also is being used to monitor worker behavior -- a realization that has left town .employees increasingly nervous. One of a growing number of municipalities and corporations around the country using GPS to track workers, Babylon has become the local flash point in the debate over how to balance the desire to improve efficiency with the need to protect worker privacy. Already,...

Frightening text messages sent by a 13-year-old New Jersey girl who claimed she was kidnapped and being held captive were probably a cruel hoax, cops said yesterday. Natasha Browne - who sent the messages to her terrified mother in Jersey City - turned up unharmed on a Brooklyn street at around 1 a.m. Initially, Natasha told NYPD detectives a harrowing tale of being abducted on her way to school on Monday, held in a "pitch black" basement and later whisked to New York where two men raped her. But that story began to unravel quickly. "If it turns out to...

GPS data at issue in Peterson caseScott Peterson is charged with killing his pregnant wife, Laci, and their unborn son. GPS data at issue in Peterson case Judge to hear defense request to sequester jury Tuesday, February 17, 2004 Posted: 0544 GMT ( 1:44 PM HKT) REDWOOD CITY, California (CNN) -- Prosecutors and defense attorneys in Scott Peterson's murder trial are due in court again Tuesday to argue whether information gathered from tracking Peterson's vehicles by satellite after his wife disappeared should be admitted as evidence. Peterson, 31, is charged with killing his pregnant wife, Laci, and their unborn son....