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Verizon Gave Phone Data to Armed Stalker Who Posed as Cop Over Email
(www.404media.co)
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this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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May = just outside her home being arrested with a knife ->
This article is crazy if you read it. If the quality of his requests felt real, especially from a non government email address, these things must cone in shitty all the time.
This is the question the entire article avoids.
The article is written as if to try and get you to avoid asking it too.
“Why was no warrant required for the data?” “Why are police allowed to just ask for your personal info without a warrant”
What’s the point of warrants if they’re no longer needed? Like, warrants are supposed to be a crucial check on police powers, and here we are rendering them pointless.
I weep for the future.
Because the telecommunications companies are eager to cooperate with the police. Since third-party doctrine applies, the privacy of the company, not the client, is considered, so Verizon happily consents to all police searches of phone records.
This has been discussed all the way up with SCOTUS (dominated by the Federalist Society at the time) so its legal.
Oh I’m not saying it’s illegal, just that it should be.
On that we have no disagreement.
If you give the police permission to conduct a search, they do not need a warrant.
But she didn’t give permission.
Why does Verizon have the authority to give it for her?
That set it up so that the material handed over was in Verizon's possession (business records) and Verizon gave permission. The law is written so that they need a warrant for an actual wiretap (call contents) but not the metadata. Of course metadata is all you need to stalk the person, so that should need a warrant too.
It's fairly easy to avoid giving your cellular carrier your address (get the bills sent to a PO box} or even your name (buy a prepaid phone with cash). But it's harder to keep your call records or geolocation info away from them. :(
It was my understanding that warrants were needed to force the acquisition of information, regardless of the type of information. Even call contents are allowed to be freely given to the police as long as you have legitimate access to it.
So Verizon has the ability to say “no” to the metadata too.
They just choose not to.
They choose to sell it rather than force the police to get a warrant. Perhaps they give it for free, I don’t know, but either way, they’re not forced to without a warrant.