I will point this out. If regular cops had access...they’d see a robbery at a 7-11 at 2:11AM. They’d reference the 16 cellphones active within 500 feet of the 7-11 at the time, and go to each house with a photo from the store cam. It’d take twenty-four hours to make the bust because the idiot robber carried his cellphone in his pocket. I could bust ten thousand robbers a week using this method.
A kidnapping? I’d get the last location of the person missing via their cellphone records, and then ask for all cellphones within that point. A dozen suspects...with just four cops, and I’d have the kidnapping solved in less than forty-eight hours.
What do you think this police department would do with that information?
A very good point and it’s a lot more legitimate and legal usage of such data. Providing a search Warrant, etc. was obtained properly and not through some quasi-legal ‘invisible court’.
Bad guys aren’t stupid. They’re going to stop using cell phones and the internet when doing bad stuff.
This is why the NSA revelations have the statists all in a tizzy. Their “we’re collecting everything” plan only works if people don’t know about it.
Which is why Clapper and Obama can look the American people right in the eye and lie about it. Knowing everything about US is everything to THEM.