Wed. April 21, 2021 | By Will Doran and Danielle Battaglia | The News & Observer |
For at least a decade now, police all around North Carolina have been tracking people’s cellphone locations without getting a warrant first.
The courts have let them do it, ruling in recent years that law enforcement can ask phone companies for someone’s historical location data even if they don’t have the probable cause needed for a warrant. And on Wednesday a committee at the General Assembly advanced a new bill that, if passed into law, would give police the ability to track someone’s real-time movements without a warrant — not just where they’ve been in the past, but where they are at any given moment.
Critics say they have concerns about people’s constitutional rights being violated, as well as what might happen if a criminal was able to take advantage of the looser rules to impersonate a police officer and stalk a victim.
“It’s a very invasive way of seeing where a person is going, what they’re doing, who they’re seeing,” said Ann Webb, senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union’s state branch.
The bill is sponsored by Republican Rep. Pat Hurley of Asheboro and is a version of legislation called “The Kelsey Smith Act,” which has passed in several other states. It has also passed the North Carolina House of Representatives, but not the Senate, in years past. The bill, House Bill 213, is named after a Kansas teenager who was kidnapped and murdered in 2007…
Read more here
