How many of the owners of the country’s 277 million cell phones even know that companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint can track their devices in real time? Most “don’t have a clue,” says privacy advocate James X. Dempsey.

…Law enforcement is tracking Americans’ cell phones in real time — without the benefit of a warrant.
Amid all the furor over the bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program a few years ago, a mini-revolt was brewing over another type of federal snooping that was getting no public attention at all. Federal prosecutors were seeking what seemed to be unusually sensitive records: internal data from telecommunications companies that showed the locations of their customers’ cell phones — sometimes in real time, sometimes after the fact. The prosecutors said they needed the records to trace the movements of suspected drug traffickers, human smugglers, even corrupt public officials. But many federal magistrates — whose job is to sign off on search warrants and handle other routine court duties — were spooked by the requests. Some in New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas balked. Prosecutors “were using the cell phone as a surreptitious tracking device,” said Stephen W. Smith, a federal magistrate in Houston….

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Law enforcement tracking US cell phones in real time

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