Posted on 06/19/2020 7:35:56 PM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
The Internal Revenue Service attempted to identify and track potential criminal suspects by purchasing access to a commercial database that records the locations of millions of American cellphones.
...The episode demonstrates a growing law enforcement interest in reams of anonymized cellphone movement data collected by the marketing industry. Government entities can try to use the data to identify individuals—which in many cases isn’t difficult with such databases.
...“There are clear rules against tracking Americans’ phones without court oversight and buying data from Venntel and other shady data brokers shouldn’t amount to a free pass to violate our civil liberties,”
“What happens any time you have location on for any purpose to any website or app—you’re giving them permission to collect that GPS data. And they are not restricted by law by what they can do with it,” said Mark Rasch, a lawyer at Kohrman Jackson & Krantz who specializes in privacy issues.
“[E]ven if it’s anonymous…it might be quite revealing,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Yes WSJ paywall.
Sounds like unlawful surveillance to me.
Clarence Thomas of all people ruled in favor of this kind of “surveillance” in a case before the Supreme Court a few years ago. His legal reasoning was sound. Since a mobile phone customer gives ownership of the phone data (the location and browsing information, not the contents of the calls) to the mobile phone service provider under the terms of the service contract, this data isn’t covered under the Fourth Amendment protections against searches and seizures without a warrant.
“Anonymized” data is BS.
With enough anonymized data to corrolate, you can de-anonymize all of it.
Neal Boortz would mention every March or so that he would kick in extra in taxes every year, so, if he got audited, it would cost them. Don’t know if that ever happened.
it will only get worse
cwii and rwii need to be the same thing
the govt is infected thoroughly with orwellian communsit totalitarians who want incredible control over every aspect of your life
and some here are happy about it if they think it makes them ‘safer’ or ‘healthier’ - and the very same spurces for this is the govtard control freaks themselves, but tgey just cant figure that out
O. J. will find Nicoles killer before the I.R.S. does anything to those two crooks.
Maybe the can survaille my cell phone to figure out where to send my $1200 check. Still waiting for it to arrive. Supposedly was sent out May 22.
I mean, it’s not like my address is not on my 1040 form I send them every year. Or my quarterly estimated tax payments.
surveil
Isn’t there some chick from IRS Cincinnati under the witness protection program these days?
IRS CID now has it’s own SWAT Teams.
They have fully automatic weapons. We do not.
This activity by the IRS is not what should alarm taxpayers. The fact that under Obama the IRS purchased massive numbers of guns and ammunition should. Several agencies that had no apparent reason to purchase and stockpile weapons and ammo did so while Obama and his pen and phone reigned. Does anyone care where these items are now stored if they haven’t simply disappeared. It is time for a Republican Senate committee to take an interest and investigate.
“They have fully automatic weapons.”
I refer to them as pre-positioned supplies for enterprising Patriots.
L
” he would kick in extra in taxes”
I occasionally answer my work phone with ‘THIS IS NOT A SECURE LINE.’
Most callers are thrown off a bit, but one wit instantly replied ‘I ALWAYS PAY EXTRA ON MY TAXES, THE GOVERNMENT IS GOOD’.
We had fun playing on that response.
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