This year Maryland’s Court of Special Appeals, ruled that law enforcement cannot use a tracking device on a cell phone without a warrant. The court reasoned that the fourth amendment is the protection of an individual’s privacy and therefore, should not be subject to law enforcement tracking cell phones without a warrant.
Nathan Freed Wessler, a staff attorney specializing in technology and privacy mentions, “The court’s withering rebuke of secret and warrantless use of invasive cell phone tracking technology shows why it is so important for these kinds of privacy invasions to be subjected to judicial review.” Now, Maryland is taking preventative action.
“Baltimore is one of the cities where police had been using the stingrays and had been concealing that fact from the courts and defendants as part of a non-disclosure agreement to get permission from the Department of Justice to use them” ,says Wessler. This further inhibits law enforcement’s ability to use tracking devicesto monitor suspects without a definite approval from the Department of Justice.