The Fourth Amendment is clear
On Tuesday, California's Senate Public Safety Committee approved
a new bill that would protect personal digital data from warrantless searches. There are many
requirements with broad ramifications:
Among other sweeping new requirements to enhance digital privacy, the bill notably imposes a warrant requirement before police can access nearly any type of digital data produced by or contained within a device or service.
In other words, that would include any use of a stingray, also known as a cell-site simulator, which can not only used to determine a phone’s location, but can also intercept calls and text messages. During the act of locating a phone, stingrays also sweep up information about nearby phones—not just the target phone.
The bill is an attempt to line up California's laws with the recent
Supreme Court decision in Riley v. California that said law enforcement needed warrants to search a citizen's cell phone. Unfortunately, as with all seemingly-no-brainer bills, this one still has a way to go before being passed.
There have been a couple of attempts over the past few years to revise electronic privacy policy.
California law enforcement agencies, like others nationwide, have been cagey as to how stingray use is requested and carried out. Last week, the Anaheim Police Department published a version of a letter that had been prewritten by the FBI in a poor attempt to provide further disclosure about how they use the surveillance devices.
However, the vote in the Senate Committee on Public Safety was 6-1. State Senator Joel Anderson was the only dissenter, siding with law enforcement's insistence that they cannot perform their jobs well enough without infringing upon the public's privacy rights. As more and more
examples of
abuses of power filter out to the public, the less and less sympathetic lawmakers can be. I, for one, hope to see this bill go through in the near future.