Sen Wyden proposes mobile-privacy legislation

Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR) said that federal law needs to be updated to halt the common police practice of tracking the whereabouts of Americans' mobile devices without a search warrant and it is time for Congress to put an end to this privacy-intrusive practice, which the Obama Justice Department has sought to defend in court.

Speaking to the libertarian Cato Institute, Sen Wyden said his staff was drafting legislation to restore "the balance necessary to protect individual rights" by requiring police to obtain a search warrant signed by a judge before obtaining location information. Even though police are tapping into the locations of mobile phones thousands of times a year, the legal ground rules remain hazy, and courts have been divided on the constitutionality and legality of the controversial practice. In September, the first federal appeals court to rule on the legality indicated that no search warrant was needed, but sent the case back to a district judge for further proceedings.