Good Black Box, Bad Black Box

The Czar raises an interesting problem but missed dropping a few nuggets of information.  Keep in mind, that GorT isn't a government conspiracy theorist who believes that the government is out to collect all this information about us and manipulate our lives (have you seen how they run some of their existing programs?)  And I don't believe the Czar is one either.  However, one should note that the Obama Administration filed on September 4th, 2012 a document with the DC District Court in which they argue that there is "no reasonable expectation of privacy" in a person's cellphone GPS data.  Therefore, the government, without a warrant, should be able to request cellphone company records about the location of their customers' phones based on cell towers.

It is of note that the US Supreme Court through out, in a 5-4 decision, the feds ability to install GPS tracking devices on suspects or suspects' vehicles without a warrant with Justice Scalia writing:

We hold that the government’s installation of a GPS device on a target’s vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a ‘search’

Many will argue that the Obama Administration is trying to argue around this decision for cellular GPS data.

So where's the outrage and the investigatory journalism that we saw towards the end of the Bush Administration when the NYT among others railed against the "warrantless phone tapping" program.  A program that tapped phone calls from suspected terrorists and their organizations from outside the US to people within the US.

So the takeaway is:  Republican tracking of suspected terrorists where US citizens' privacy might be impaired: bad.  Democrat tracking of citizen cellphone location data where US citizens' privacy will be impaired: good.