Committee on Oversight and Government Re

Geolocation Technology and Privacy Committee on Oversight and Government Re

Protection against unreasonable government searches is a cornerstone of our democracy. Technological advances, particularly with smartphones, have made it easier to solve crimes, but those same advances have also made it easier and less expensive for law enforcement to track people's movements over long periods of time. The Department of Justice possesses hundreds of cell-site simulator, also known as stingrays, that they use to surveil people. These advances make it possible to conduct either historical or real-time prolonged surveillance, previously unachievable with traditional surveillance techniques. Prolonged surveillance of geolocation reveals intimate personal details far exceeding mere location. As the D. C. Circuit Court noted, "A person who knows all of another's travels can deduce whether he is a weekly churchgoer, a heavy drinker, a regular at the gym, an unfaithful husband, an outpatient receiving medical treatment, an associate of particular individuals or political groups, and not just one such fact about a person but all such facts." Geolocation is more than just a record of where we are or were; it is a window into who we are. Do you want your Uber trip records to have Fourth Amendment protection? What about your Fitbit data? What about your smartphone information? The Director of National Intelligence has acknowledged that, "In the future, intelligence services might use the Internet of Things for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment or to gain access to networks or use credentials."