The ever-expanding loss of privacy

More good news for all you hip cell-phone carriers out there:

"Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers.
In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime (Emphasis mine). Privacy advocates fear such a practice may expose average Americans to a new level of government scrutiny of their daily lives."

"May expose"? I'd say that's an understatement.

Fortunately for the average peasant, a hero Federal judge in Texas, apparently sick of the shoddy and lazy police work performed by Federal police agencies, has outed the whole sorry scheme by publishing publicly a decision that denied a DEA agent cell location info on a suspect:

"Magistrate Judge Brian L. Owsley, of the Corpus Christi division of the Southern District of Texas, said the agent's affidavit failed to focus on 'specifics necessary to establish probable cause, such as relevant dates, names and places.'"

You know, proof that a crime was being committed.

"The agent stated that the DEA had " 'identified' or 'determined' certain matters," Owsley wrote, but "these identifications, determinations or revelations are not facts, but simply conclusions by the agency."

Bless you, sir, for upholding the law, and not merely bowing and scraping at the whims of someone flashing a Federal badge and declaring that they "need" the info posthaste, but don't bother to present any evidence, in effect just saying "trust us, we know what we're doing".

Ugh.