FLE

Federal Court Limits Government's Power to Monitor Cell Phones

The government must show probable cause to obtain information from Cingular Wireless LLC, Verizon Wireless and other providers of cell phone services in the U.S. on the physical location of a user, a federal court ruled. U.S. Judge James K. Bredar in Baltimore found there is no reasonable expectation of privacy when a cell phone is used in public. Still, the government must have a warrant to monitor cell phone conversations because they may take place at home, he said. Warrantless monitoring of an electronic tracking device in a private residence, a location not open to visual surveillance, violates the Fourth Amendment rights of those who have a justifiable interest in the privacy of the residence,'' Bredar said in an order today. When turned on, a cell phone communicates with one or more nearby signal towers, automatically switching to the one with the best reception. Wireless service providers and law enforcement officers, if given permission, can compare the signals and locate the phone through a process of triangulation, according to court documents....

A Colorado woman takes a stand against arbitrary ID checks

The first time she was asked to show identification while riding the bus to work, Deborah Davis was so startled that she complied without thinking. But the more she thought about it, the less sense it made. That's how Davis, a 50-year-old Colorado woman with four grown children and five grandchildren, ended up getting dragged off the bus by federal security officers, who handcuffed her, took her to their station, and cited her for two misdemeanors. Davis, who is scheduled to be arraigned on December 9, is risking 60 days in jail to show her fellow Americans that they don't need to blindly obey every dictate imposed in the name of security. The public bus that Davis took to her office job in Lakewood, Colorado, crosses the Denver Federal Center, a 90-building complex occupied by agencies such as the U.S. Geological Survey, the Interior Department, the General Services Administration, and the Bureau of Land Management. "The facility is not high security," says Davis. "It's not Area 51 or NORAD or the Rocky Mountain Arsenal." Guards nevertheless board buses as they enter the complex and demand IDs from passengers, whether or not they're getting off there. According to Davis, the guards barely glance at the IDs, let alone write down names or check them against a list. "It's just an obedience test," says Gail Johnson, a lawyer recruited to represent Davis by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado. "It does nothing for security." Ahmad Taha, supervisory special agent with the Federal Protective Service, which is in charge of security at the Denver complex, said guards there have been checking the IDs of bus passengers since 9/11. He declined to explain the security rationale for this ritual or to comment on Davis' case....

FEMA lifts suspension of Phoenix rescue team

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has lifted its suspension of the Phoenix Fire Department's urban search and rescue team two months after firefighters were sent home from hurricane relief efforts because they had armed police officers with them. Arizona Task Force 1 will be allowed to continue deploying Phoenix police deputized as U.S. marshals "as long as they wear U.S. marshals' uniforms," FEMA officials said. FEMA's decision to allow armed police, despite a rule against carrying firearms, applies only to Phoenix's team. But the agency left open the possibility that the city's model would be adopted on a broader scale. A FEMA work group began meeting earlier this month to revise its policy on force protection. "I'm under the distinct impression they're going to look at this as a national model," said Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, who has lobbied the federal agency to change its rules since the team was suspended on Sept. 26. At issue is a rule in FEMA's code of conduct that prohibits urban search and rescue teams from having firearms....

GAO: Congress Nixed Costly Terror Training

Efforts to train thousands of federal agents to protect commercial flights during heightened terror alerts were quietly abandoned more than a year ago because Congress objected to the cost, government investigators said Tuesday. The Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, reported that the federal air marshal service suspended its efforts to develop such a "surge capacity" by training customs and immigration agents to protect passenger airliners. The Homeland Security Department "indicated that it would continue to support the surge effort but had not determined whether and when it would resume cross-training to resume this initiative," the report said. The plan was first disclosed in September 2003 by Tom Ridge, then Homeland Security secretary. Ridge announced that the air marshals would be combined with immigration and customs agents in the same agency so agents in both could be cross-trained and used for aviation security. The move would allow more than 5,000 armed federal law enforcement agents to be deployed on commercial aircraft, he said....

Report on FBI Tool Is Disputed

The Justice Department has criticized as misleading and inaccurate a Washington Post report about the FBI's expanded power to collect the private records of ordinary Americans while conducting terrorism and espionage investigations. The Nov. 6 article detailed the dramatic increase in the use of "national security letters," a three-decade-old investigative tool that was given new life with the passage of the USA Patriot Act in 2001. The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, a hundredfold increase over historic norms, the article said. Instead of merely enabling the FBI to review in secret the customer records of suspected foreign agents, national security letters allow investigators to secretly scrutinize some records of U.S. residents and visitors who are not alleged to be terrorists or spies, the article said. The records of ordinary Americans' personal financial transactions, telephone calls, consumer purchases and Web site visits can be obtained relatively easily from businesses by federal authorities with the letters, issued by FBI field supervisors and a few headquarters officials, according to the article. In a 10-page letter to the chairmen of the House and Senate judiciary committees last week, Assistant Attorney General William E. Moschella said that the report contained "distortions and factual errors." He presented a 17-point rebuttal to what he variously described as inaccurate claims, insinuations and implications, either by The Post or by critics quoted in the article....also see Justice Dept. Defends FBI on Patriot Act for the AP version of this story.

Court delays Padilla transfer from brig

A federal appeals court on Wednesday delayed the transfer of accused terrorist Jose Padilla from a military brig to face trial in Miami. Padilla, a 35-year-old U.S. citizen, was indicted last week by a federal grand jury in Florida. He will remain in the Navy brig in South Carolina for at least two weeks under a two-page order issued by the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia. The development surprised top Justice Department officials. But the three-judge panel said it needs to know whether it should set aside a September opinion that upheld Padilla's military detention before returning him to civilian authorities. The court said it wants to hear arguments on whether the opinion was to be vacated "as a consequence of the transfer." The judges pointed out that the facts alleged by the government "warranting" Padilla's military detention differed from the charges in the indictment. The government was ordered to reply by December 9, and Padilla's lawyers have a deadline of December 16 to respond -- the same date the government is also due to respond to Padilla's latest appeal to the Supreme Court....