Passing the buck on location tracking

When it comes to police access to cellphone location data of suspects, Congress has left the courts holding the bag.

The high-stakes privacy debate over law enforcement tracking citizens using geolocational data is one Congress — despite a few bills and a hearing on the horizon — isn’t likely to resolve anytime soon. Lawmakers have left it to the courts, while the Supreme Court seemed to toss it back to the Hill recently. “It couldn’t be more up in the air than it is right now,” Susan Freiwald, a University of San Francisco law professor, said about the state of the law on smartphone tracking. “Practices just vary magistrate judge by magistrate judge and law enforcement agency by law enforcement agency.” These days, the same technology that ensures smartphone users can’t get lost on their way to a new restaurant allows the police to track their movements. If it sounds slightly Orwellian, that’s because it is.