I first read about this over at Americablog, so thanks to John in DC for finding this out.
Various law enforcement agencies have used companies of dubious legality to get personal information -- in this case, phone records -- without a warrant. The Associated Press reported that
Numerous federal and local law enforcement agencies have bypassed subpoenas and warrants designed to protect civil liberties and gathered Americans' personal telephone records from private-sector data brokers.
[...]
The law enforcement agencies include offices in the
Homeland Security Department and Justice Department — including the
FBI and U.S. Marshal's Service — and municipal police departments in California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia and Utah. Experts believe hundreds of other departments frequently use such services.
It turns out that federal law agencies have been bypassing the need for pesky warrants to use private programs that the House unanimously passed legislation against. Let me say that again. Every single vote in the House that day went on the same side. That doesn't happen very often in these partisan times.
But the Senate never debated this legislation; the Republicans in charge of the Senate decided, for some reason, that they wouldn't deal with this issue that, again, unanimously passed the House.
Maybe it was George W calling his buddy Bill Frist and telling him not to do anything about this legislation. Because, W figured, he could use these semi-legal but totally immoral businesses to do his business.
Call your local Senator and tell him to pressure Frist and the Republican leadership to budge on this issue.
I blogged on this earlier --
http://www.progressiveu.org/102648-it-wasnt-good-enough-to-tap-all-our-phones-now-law-enforcement-can-buy-their-information-to-bypass-subpeonas-and-warrants
This information shouldn't be provided to anyone without a subpoena or warrant. My blog addresses that these companies sell their findings to individuals as well as providing the data to law enforcement agencies. Strangely enough, the phone records for Cleveland Cavalier -- Damon Jones and credit information regarding the father of Jon Benet Ramsey were bought by private citizens.
We are all bound to make enemy's in this world -- ones that we are aware of but more frightning are the ones we don't know about. Imagine what these people could do with your phone records or your credit report!!
These companies need be stopped. The profit off illegal methods of collecting private information. I can't imagine anyone who could be pleased with this :(
Sad that a governing body can't see the horrible implecations of allowing such preditors to prey on unsuspecting citizens. This isn't about criminals anymore, this is about unknowing, law abiding citizens who have done nothing to provoke the infringements of their rights.