Scary: Your cellphone is spying on you...

The government can track you to within 50 feet by your cellphone. What could possibly go wrong?

Big Brother has been outsourced. The police can find out where you are, where you’ve been, even where you’re going. All thanks to that handy little human tracking device in your pocket: your cellphone.

There are 331 million cellphone subscriptions—about 20 million more than there are residents—in the United States. Nearly 90 percent of adult Americans carry at least one phone. The phones communicate via a nationwide network of nearly 300,000 cell towers and 600,000 micro sites, which perform the same function as towers. When they are turned on, they ping these nodes once every seven seconds or so, registering their locations, usually within a radius of 150 feet. By 2018 new Federal Communications Commission regulations will require that cellphone location information be even more precise: within 50 feet. Newer cellphones also are equipped with GPS technology, which uses satellites to locate the user more precisely than tower signals can. Cellphone companies retain location data for at least a year. AT&T has information going all the way back to 2008.

Police have not been shy about taking advantage of these data. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), U.S. law enforcement agencies made 1.5 million requests for user data from cellphone companies in 2011. And under current interpretations of the law, you will never find out if they were targeting you.

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Rasmussen: Romney up three points on Obama

Rasmussen had Obama up by 2 points a few days ago. Since Rasmussen Daily Tracking is a three day tracking poll, the entire effect of the RNC convention may not be factored in, but +5 is respectable.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows Mitt Romney attracting support from 47% of voters nationwide, while President Obama earns 44% of the vote. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate, and six percent (6%) are undecided. 

Rasmussen has Mitt Romney up four points on Obama

Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday has Romney beating Obama 48-44. Five percent are undicided and will likely go to Romney.

(Rasmussen Reports) — The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows Mitt Romney picking up 48% of the vote, while President Obama attracts 44%. Three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate, and five percent (5%) are undecided.

These figures include 40% who are certain they will vote for Romney and 36% who are certain they will vote for Obama. Both men win support from eight percent (8%) who plan to vote for their candidate but could change their mind before Election Day.

Chart of the Day: Rasmussen's Daily Tracking of Obama vs. Romney

Romney is opening up a huge lead among likely voters according to Rasmussen.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows Mitt Romney earning 50% of the vote and President Obama attracting 42% support. Four percent (4%) would vote for a third party candidate, while another three percent (3%) are undecided.

Matchup results are updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). See tracking history.

Good News: The FBI turns off that secret GPS tracking device they installed on your car

 


You are probably thinking they only had a few of these devices. They had 3000 of them!

(WSJ)- The Supreme Court’s recent ruling overturning the warrantless use of GPS tracking devices has caused a “sea change” inside the U.S. Justice Department, according to FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann.

Mr. Weissmann, speaking at a University of San Francisco conference called “Big Brother in the 21st Century” on Friday, said that the court ruling prompted the FBI to turn off about 3,000 GPS tracking devices that were in use.

These devices were often stuck underneath cars to track the movements of the car owners. In U.S. v. Jones, the Supreme Court ruled that using a device to track a car owner without a search warrant violated the law.

After the ruling, the FBI had a problem collecting the devices that it had turned off, Mr. Weissmann said. In some cases, he said, the FBI sought court orders to obtain permission to turn the devices on briefly – only in order to locate and retrieve them. Keep on reading...