By The American Civil Liberties Union
Law enforcement is taking advantage of outdated privacy laws to track Americans like never before. New technologies can record your every movement, revealing detailed information about how you choose to live your life. Without the right protections in place, the government can gain access to this information – and to your private life – with disturbing ease.
As long as it is turned on, your mobile phone registers its position with cell towers every few minutes, whether the phone is being used or not. Since mobile carriers are retaining location data on their customers, government officials can learn a tremendous amount of detailed personal information about you by accessing your location history from your cell phone company, ranging from which friends you’re seeing to where you go to the doctor to how often you go to church. The Justice Department and most local police forces can get months’ worth of this information, without you ever knowing – and often without a warrant from a judge.
You can do something here.
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See also: The Minority Report: Chicago’s New Police Computer Predicts Crimes, But Is It Racist?
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Comments welcome.
Posted on February 21, 2014