Eideard

Think about all the data — photos, videos, text messages, calendar items, apps, call log, voice mail, and e-mail — on your cell phone right now. If you’re arrested, could the police search your cell phone? And would they need a warrant?

That depends on which state you’re in.

In California, it is legal for police to search an arrestee’s cell phone without a warrant — ever since a January decision by the California Supreme Court. California civil rights advocates are pushing back. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is supporting California Assembly Bill SB 914, which would require police in that state to get a warrant before searching an arrestee’s cell phone…

Meanwhile, in Florida, an appellate court decision upheld warrantless cell phone searches, defining the phone as a kind of “container.” This case may be considered by the Florida Supreme Court.

A similar Georgia appellate court decision upheld a warrantless search of a cell phone found in an arrestee’s car (not on her person).

In contrast, the Ohio Supreme Court has barred warrantless cell phone searches…

The pattern appears to be that around the U.S., some state and local police officers are taking the initiative to search arrestees’ cell phones. In some cases this yields information relevant to the alleged crime, which has contributed to indictments and convictions.

Only then do some of these cases wind up in appellate or state supreme courts in a process that often takes years.

If you’re concerned about police or anyone else getting into your cell phone, a basic precaution is to configure your phone’s security settings to always require a passcode or pattern to access any of the phone’s data or functions.

According to Catherine Crump of the American Civil Liberties Union, “The police can ask you to unlock the phone — which many people will do — but they almost certainly cannot compel you to unlock your phone without the involvement of a judge.”

Police are supposed to protect and serve within the definitions of law and Constitution. Snooping without oversight from a court – as gutless as many judges may be – is outside the mandate of American law and order.

Yes, this isn’t the first time that fear and whimpering leads to police-state solutions. Cops have been portable gangs used to suppress unions from organizing, people from protest and dissent. But, the eventual reaction from the people of this land is rejection of Big Brother as judge and jury on the street.

The number of people accessing the net on mobile phones could soon outstrip the capacity of networks, experts warn.

When you see a tech article that includes “experts warn” in the first sentence, understand that the whole concept was probably offered to the publisher by a PR firm employed by those who are profiting from the technology in the warning. Or their own in-house spin merchants.

Mobile data traffic looks set to rise 25 fold by 2012, said mobile analyst firm Informa. The boom could present operators with problems as revenues generated by those using such mobile data services will only double over the same time period.

“Revenues from data are increasing much slower than traffic,” said Dimitris Mavrakis, mobile network analyst from Informa. “Where operators are experiencing exploding data traffic, revenues are not following them.”

Ah-hah. We get the hook early on. We are enjoined to help the poor, struggling wireless carriers to increase their profits – or we shall all die in a hell absent adequate mobile phone access.

Graham Carey, a spokesman for network optimisation firm ByteMobile, said the history of mobile networks also made it harder to handle the always-on nature of many smartphones and laptops.

Then, we get a listing of the micro-disasters that only can be solved by heading off Net Neutrality at the pass – letting the operators raise prices and minimize usage.

“What’s going to happen if carriers do not respond appropriately? They are going to crush the user experience.”

As if wireless companies ever cared about or considered “the user experience”.

Humbug!

After finding 775 prohibited cell phones in Texas prisons so far this year, state officials are petitioning federal regulators and the U.S. Senate for the power to jam cell phone signals in lockups — joining 27 other states who want the same authority.

Texas and other states hope to use jamming technology to keep cell phones out of the hands of inmates, who can use them to order criminal acts outside prison walls. “It’s critical,” said the Texas prison system’s inspector general, John Moriarty. “The cell phones are the most immediate threat to public safety in Texas. … We’ve had a lot of crimes orchestrated over those phones…”

But cell phone jamming by states is apparently prohibited by a 1934 federal law that bans states from interfering with federal airwaves.

U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, has filed a measure to specifically give the Federal Communications Commission authority to allow the jamming. Under Hutchison’s proposal, officials seeking to jam signals would have to get authority to do so separately for each facility.

Let’s make certain there’s enough paperwork and red tape.

“The problem with jamming technology is that’s it’s imprecise,” Walls said. “We’re certainly not at odds on the intent. There’s not one legitimate customer that we have behind bars, and shutting that off is as much of a concern to the industry as anybody else.”

Walls said they want a solution that will “protect legitimate use while still solving the problem.”

Tell you what. Let the fracking cell phone companies come up with a technology that does what they want. Meanwhile, jam the signals in the prisons. Save the “what-ifs” for your favorite soap opera.

There are systems already available that allow jamming in general while allowing communications for guards and other prison personnel. Wasting government time over interpretation of a law from 1934 is bloody absurd. More profit-driven nanny-state neocon politics.

Wireless neighborhood

The death row inmate who ignited a growing scandal on prison contraband after he was caught talking on a smuggled cell phone was transferred Wednesday to a prison psychiatric unit after guards discovered a 3-foot strip of sheet tied to a fixture in his cell.

Richard Tabler was restrained and taken in for evaluation after guards also noticed red marks on his neck. No serious injuries were noted. Tabler was later transferred to Jester IV in Richmond from the Livingston prison. “We don’t know if he was going to make a noose. It’s a precaution,” prison spokesman Jason Clark said of Tabler.

Tabler’s threatening calls from a smuggled cell phone to state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, and a reporter prompted the governor this week to order a systemwide lockdown so guards could sweep all 112 prisons for contraband.

The massive search through Texas prisons has turned up 13 more smuggled cell phones and 12 more cell phone chargers in the past 24 hours, including another phone and charger found on death row, Clark said.

The cell phone and charger discovered on death row were found above the ceiling in the men’s shower area. That brings the number of cell phones found since Monday on Texas’ death row to four.

The prison system remains locked down, with inmates assigned to their cells as correctional officers sweep all prison units for contraband, a process that could take three weeks.

No employees have been arrested in connection with any of the smuggled cell phones found this week.

i guess the cell phones teleported into the prisons, eh?

What crap. Contraband gets into prisons one way. It gets walked in by someone. It may be kin waltzing past sleazy, incompetent, corrupt guards – or the corrupt guards earn side money by acting as delivery boys.

Hidden cell phone

South Carolina might already have started jamming cell phone signals in prisons to prevent convicts from committing further crimes, if it weren’t for one significant problem with the plan: It’s against the law.

The struggle to stop cell phone use in prisons — where some experts say the devices have become a new form of cash — has states trying old-fashioned cell searches, sophisticated body scanners, even dogs trained to sniff out batteries and memory chips. South Carolina’s state prison chief, Jon Ozmint, wants to add to those tactics with existing technology that blocks cell signals.

Standing in his way is the Federal Communications Act, which prevents states from using jammers or otherwise interfering with federal airwaves. The Federal Communications Commission can give federal agencies the authority to use such jammers. But there’s no such provision for state and local law enforcement.

“This is a classic example of a rule that has not kept up with technology,” said Ozmint, who has managed South Carolina’s 28 prisons for the past five years. “It’s just hypocrisy beyond the pale of reason that the big bad federal government goes, ‘Oh, well, we can use this technology, but you poor little states can’t use the same technology to protect your citizens.”‘

You’d think it might be easy to rectify the situation. But the FCC has to be involved. And then there’s the biggie – Congress has to pass legislation.

That would have to be sensible, useful laws; hopefully, without mandating hardware from lobbyists who would better serve the nation from inside the prison cells in question.

The removal of all land-line telephones from the University of Florida in Gainesville’s dormitories saves nearly $600,000 a year, a school official says.

University employee Norbert Dunkel, who oversees the school’s residence halls, said he has received little to no complaints regarding the absence of the phones that were removed last year in a cost-saving venture.

“We were spending an inordinate amount of money for nothing,” Dunkel said.

Dunkel has conducted a survey of the university’s students and found 98 percent of those surveyed owned their own cell phone. Further details of the survey were not available.

The Post said other Florida schools, such as Florida State University and Florida Atlantic University, have since followed suit by removing land-line services from their dorms.

We got rid of land lines in our home years ago. I carry a cell phone on my walks and it’s in my pocket most of the time, anyway. All of our outbound calls are routed through Skype.