FBI is on your cell phone. Do you care?

"In a massive coordinated information-seeking campaign, 34 ACLU affiliates are filing over 375 requests in 31 states across the country with local law enforcement agencies large and small that seek to uncover when, why and how they are using cell phone location data to track Americans. ... The requests, being filed under the states' freedom of information laws, are an effort to strip away the secrecy that has surrounded law enforcement use of cell phone tracking capabilities."If there's any doubt about Americans' widespread use of cell phones, look around on any street. Also, says Catherine Crump, staff attorney for the ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project: "A detailed history of someone's movements is extremely personal and is the kind of information the Constitution protects" – and that's why "the ability to access cell phone location data is an incredibly powerful tool and its use is shrouded in secrecy" by the Obama administration. Watch where you're going. You could be brought into an FBI or local police probe. This spring "police in Michigan sought information about every cell phone near the site of a planned labor protest." What if the FBI is refocusing on all cells in an area of protesters, including by American Muslims, whose Bill of Rights signs are bringing an administration into disrepute and contempt, and you were just wandering by? More demanding rule-of-law requirements of government tracking of us are coming. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, have introduced the truly patriotic Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act, supported by the ACLU, that "requires the government to show probable cause and get a warrant before acquiring the geolocational information of a U.S. person." This would apply, among other forms of such tracking, to cell phones. It would also require telecommunications companies (including providers of cell phones) to get our consent to collect data from locations where we use them. Where do we go with cell phones in our ears? These companies, without telling us, already convey this location information to the FBI without our knowing we're being tracked as we talk...more