Legal News

ACLU: Chris Christie, Tracker of Cell Phones, Is ?Big Brother?

By Amir Efrati

Privacy advocates have warned for years about the dangers of government agents tracking suspects through their cell phones without obtaining warrants. Feds routinely ask courts to order cellphone companies to provide tracking data used to locate suspects, without showing probable cause. They often get their wish. (For background, click here.)

Two years ago DOJ began recommending to its prosecutors to first obtain search warrants before acquiring location information for cell phones. But the Obama DOJ appears to be continuing the Bush DOJ’s position that getting data without a warrant doesn’t violate the Fourth Amendment, though there are ongoing legal challenges to that notion in courts across the country.

That hasn’t stopped the outcry from some groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union. The latest target of their ire: Christopher Christie (pictured), who recently resigned as U.S. attorney for New Jersey and announced a run for governor as a GOP candidate.

On Thursday the group released material they got from DOJ that showed Christie, who started his tenure in 2002, authorized the tracking of suspects’ cell phones, including 19 cases since November 2007. Nearly all of the cases resulted in criminal prosecution. Here’s the Star-Ledger story.

Christie, who dismissed the ACLU comments as “overblown hyperbole,” said the tracking was legal and that the U.S. attorney’s office began tracking phones without warrants before he took over.

“Chris Christie wasn’t sitting around wondering where everyone was. We were trying to investigate and prosecute crime, and I think our record is pretty good that we did it well,” he told the Star-Ledger.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on April 24, 2009 (boomark / email).