It’s the American way to expect privacy. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees that no warrant shall issue without a detailed description of the person, place, or thing to be searched and probable cause. We expect law enforcement to follow rules that balance our right to privacy with the police’s need for information to track down criminals.
But the balance shifts constantly as new technologies are created. Now privacy is threatened electronically, and while the FBI fights Apple over phone encryption, lawmakers are debating warrantless geo-tracking. It sounds fancy but basically the question is whether police should need a warrant to get location info from cell phone towers.
