[Rutherford] WASHINGTON, D.C. —The U.S. Supreme Court has let stand a lower court ruling that allows police to warrantlessly track people’s location and movements through their personal cell phones, despite longstanding Fourth Amendment’s prohibitions against warrantless searches and seizures and growing concerns about the government’s massive surveillance networks. The Rutherford Institute had filed an amicus brief in Hammond v. U.S., challenging the practice as unconstitutional, especially when used by police to pinpoint a person’s location with much greater precision than ever before, whether that person is at home, at the library, a political event, a doctor’s office, etc.
"Americans are being swept up into a massive digital data dragnet that does not distinguish between those who are innocent of wrongdoing, suspects, or criminals. Cell phones have become de facto snitches, offering up a steady stream of digital location data on users’ movements and travels," said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. "Added to that, police are tracking people’s movements by way of license plate toll readers; scouring social media posts; triangulating data from cellphone towers and WiFi signals; layering facial recognition software on top of that; and then cross-referencing footage with public social media posts, all in an effort to identify, track and eventually round us up. This is what it means to live in a suspect society." |