A controversial decision in the U.S. federal Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit found that law enforcement officials were legally allowed to track a drug dealer's cellphone without a warrant in 2006.
Police used the GPS feature on the criminal's phone to keep tabs on his whereabouts, and he was eventually arrested and convicted, according to a report from
CNET. One of the judges on the three-person panel ruled in favor of the decision because he said the U.S. Constitution does not grant citizens the ability to not have their cellphones tracked.
In particular, this was the case because the police in question used wireless technology and had no physical interaction with the suspects in question, the report said. It would have been different had they placed a tracking device on the suspects' cars, for example.
Eduard Goodman, chief privacy officer for
Identity Theft 911, writes regularly on his official blog about the ways in which people can and cannot expect to be protected from being tracked both online and in the real world.
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