Location Privacy Act: California Pushes for Warrants in GPS Tracking

By emeadows
August 27, 2012

Last week the California state legislature passed the Location Privacy Act of 2012 (SB-1434), “which would make it mandatory for law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before gathering any GPS or other location-tracking data that a suspect’s cell phone might be sending back to its carrier,” reports Ars Technica.
The act passed with strong support from both parties and requires the governor’s signature to be put into law.
“But the bill isn’t necessarily a straight-shot to penal code glory: the EFF points out that Governor Jerry Brown vetoed California’s last attempt at enforcing stricter privacy rules in 2011, when he killed a bill that would have prevented police from searching the phones of apprehended suspects without a warrant,” according to the article.
The issue was recently in the news after a federal appeals court ruled that law enforcement could track the GPS signal coming from a suspect’s prepaid phone without a warrant.
“Privacy advocates questioned the constitutionality of that ruling, which seems to open the door to a world where cellphones can reveal much more information to the wrong people than their users would ever have expected,” concludes Ars Technica.

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