By Allie Bohm, ACLU Nationwide
It’s been over a year since 35 ACLU affiliates filed over 380 public records requests with state and local law enforcement agencies seeking information about their policies, procedures, and practices for tracking cell phones. And 13 months later (and in the wake of this front page article in the New York Times), we’re still handling responses. We’ve posted the latest batch of documents received on our interactive webmap; here are highlights:
Some law enforcement agencies are trying to avoid letting the public know what they’re doing. The law enforcement guide for police in Irvine, CA specifically states, “Do not disclose this information in court any more than is absolutely necessary to make your case. Never disclose to the media these techniques—especially cell tower tracking.” We saw the same attitude in training materials from the Iowa Fusion Center, which instructs law enforcement, “Do not mention to the public or media the use of cell phone technology or equipment to locate the targeted subject.” Read: “We would hate for the public to know how easy it is for us to obtain their personal information. It would be inconvenient if they asked for privacy protections.” Law enforcement could most likely solve more crimes more expediently if they could break down a suspect’s front door or open his/her postal mail without a warrant, but as my colleague Catherine Crump points out, while that may be convenient, it is not okay. Warrantless cell phone location tracking shouldn’t be either.
Fortunately, Irvine’s isn’t the only word on advice to law enforcement agents. Santa Ana, CA provides its agents with much more civil liberties-friendly training than its neighbor to the south, and its warnings should serve any law enforcement agency: “Without a warrant . . . cell phone location data are released only in exigent situations. Exigent circumstances are best described as immediate danger of death or serious bodily injury to any person. Keep in mind that even if you convince a provider that the circumstances warrant release of the information, a district attorney and defense attorney will at some point be reviewing the case.”
More importantly, some of the law enforcement agencies in California, Nevada, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, reported that, like their counterparts in parts of Hawaii, Kansas, Kentucky, Nevada, and New Jersey, they always obtain probable cause warrants in order to track cell phone location information. And then there’s the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, which does not currently track cell phone location information, but which promised that if it starts sometime in the future, it will definitely require probable cause warrants in order to do so. We hope other law enforcement agencies will make similar commitments. Location information is too sensitive for law enforcement agencies to be accessing it in criminal investigations without a warrant, and these agencies show that in every geographic region in the country, a warrant requirement is a completely reasonable and workable policy. And by the way, the law enforcement agency in Nevada that reports obtaining warrants? Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. If Sin City police get warrants, can’t everyone?
The new documents also touch on one of the most common questions we’ve been asked about cell phone location tracking: in what sorts of investigations are law enforcement agencies using cell phone location tracking? It’s a question that 5,509 pages later we still wish we had a better answer to and that, despite our records requests, the public is still largely in the dark about. San Bernadino County, CA sent us a ton of invoices from a one year period. (Any number-crunchers out there want to figure out how much money they spent to track cell phones that year? The documents are here.) “Okay to pay narcotics” was scrawled on some of the invoices. Others were marked “Okay to pay [redacted].” From this, we can surmise that cell phone location tracking is used in drug cases (no surprise to anyone who has been following the few location tracking cases to make it to the courts). Either they redacted “narcotics” on some invoices and not others, or they redacted other types of investigations where cell phone tracking was used, and someone out there does not want us to know what all they’re using cell phone location tracking for.
Overall, these new documents provide even more reason for Congress to pass the Geolocational Privacy and Surveillance Act, which would require law enforcement agents to obtain a warrant in order to access location information and, in the interim, for state legislatures to pass similar legislation at the state level. That way, we’ll know that law enforcement is only tracking cell phone location in legitimate investigations and with proper court oversight. And, you can help! Head to our action center and tell your members of Congress to support the Geolocational Privacy and Surveillance Act right now.

Eight Detroit-area public school students returning to classes this week are plaintiffs against a school system they say has failed them.
Their families and the American Civil Liberties Union say that the Highland Park school system has denied the students the right to learn to read, and that the state has a responsibility to fix that.
Michelle Johnson has five children in Highland Park schools. Her daughter is heading into the 12th grade, but can read at only about the fourth-grade level.
"It's heartbreaking every morning when you get up and people look in your face and say, 'Oh, that's that lady, her daughter can't read,' " Johnson says.
Poor Reading Scores
Johnson says she noticed her daughter struggling a few years ago and wanted her to repeat the eighth grade. But the school wouldn't do that, she says.
"They moved her onto the ninth. She failed some of her ninth-grade classes, [and] they still passed her onto the 10th," she says.
Attorneys for the ACLU say Johnson's daughter is not alone. They point to Michigan state data showing that only one-quarter of the Highland Park district's sixth- and seventh-graders passed the state's reading exam last year.
"I think this is one of the most important lawsuits in the history of the country when it comes to basic educational rights," says Mark Rosenbaum, who is representing the plaintiffs through the ACLU.
The lawsuit accuses the state of failing to enforce a Michigan law that says students who do poorly on standardized reading tests — which are given in the fourth or seventh grades — must receive remedial help to bring them up to grade level. Rosenbaum is asking a judge to enforce that law.
"The fact is that this is the first 'right to read' case, but it won't be the last," he says. "The reality is that there are children throughout Michigan and throughout the country whose ZIP code is determining their educational opportunities."
Pressing 'The Restart Button'
No one from the school district will concede that the system has failed when it comes to remedial education. To further muddy the waters, there's been a huge upheaval in the district's administration. The state has appointed an emergency manager to fix the district's troubled finances. And this summer, that state appointee turned the entire district over to a charter-school operator.
Kansas City's Failed Schools Leave Students Behind
The charter company, The Leona Group, has now been added as a defendant in the lawsuit. While Leona Group officials won't talk directly about the court case, Pamela Williams, the superintendent of this new charter school system, says things will change. She promises that any student who does poorly on state exams or the district's own assessments going forward will get prompt remedial help.
"What we're going to do is to press the restart button," Williams says. "And when students come in, we are going to gather baseline data, and then go from there."
Those are great promises, says Rosenbaum. But, he says, "that's a long way from saying the resources, the wherewithal, the capabilities and capacity are present in this charter."
For their part, state officials are declining to comment on the lawsuit. They argue in court filings that the state constitution gives local districts full control over schools.
But the plaintiffs say that position smacks of trying to have it both ways. They argue that the state taking over the district was a drastic step — and an acknowledgement that the school system has failed here. And that, they say, means it's the state's job to fix it.
The judge has scheduled a hearing for next month.
NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO
http://www.npr.org/2012/09/06/160244350/students-say-theyve-been-denied-the-right-to-read