The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union have filed a lawsuit againt the Department of Justice over mobile phone records. The groups want to know if the government is illegally tracking the cell phone acitivity of Americans. The suit was filed yesterday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
In their complaint, the EFF and ACLU said, “The information now in the public domain suggests that [the DOJ] may be engaging in unauthorized and potentially unconstitutional tracking of individuals through their mobile phones. Information pertaining to the DOJ’s procedures for obtaining real-time tracking information is vital to the public’s understanding of the privacy risks of carrying a mobile phone and of, more generally, the government’s expansive view of its surveillance powers.”
The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request last fall seeking guidelines and documents relate to tracking cellphone users. However, the government has not yet provided any information.
Sources: http://www.aclu.org/freespeech/gen/35874prs20080701.html, http://www.aclu.org/freespeech/gen/35873lgl20080701.html,
http://www.nytimes.com/idg/IDG_852573C4006938808525747A0049B6CA.html?ref=technology
