Obama DOJ Wants Greater Power to Access Cellphone Records

Barack Obama’s Justice Department is requesting that access to cellphone records be made more available to the government.  Jason Weinstein, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s criminal division, asserted that warrants for early stages of investigations “crippled” prosecutors and law enforcement officials and thus should be abolished.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court took the side of privacy, arguing that a warrant was needed to put a GPS satellite-tracking device on a suspect’s vehicle. But now, Weinstein argued, federal courts around the country are divided; they can’t agree whether or not to require warrants for records of phone usage collected at towers that transmit cellphone signals.  He further stated that just because prosecutors have been told to get warrants to put a tracking device on a vehicle or to track the precise GPS location of a person via their cellphone, warrants should not be necessary to obtain data from the towers.

This move by the Obama administration may go unremarked upon in the media; they routinely cover for Obama’s antics. But when the Bush Administration headed down the same path, there were howls of indignation from the Left.

John Amato, creator of CrooksandLiars.com, complained:

We are a nation of laws and this is a subversion of that tenet, but how often have we seen this already during the Bush years. Do you still want to give the big Telecoms retroactive immunity for their willing participation in the NSA program?

ThinkProgress.org whined:

While serving as a U.S. attorney during the Bush administration, Christopher Christie, now a Republican candidate for Governor in New Jersey, tracked the whereabouts of citizens through their cell phones without warrants … ACLU staff attorney Catherine Crump noted: “Tracking the location of people’s cell phones reveals intimate details of their daily routines and is highly invasive of their privacy. The government is violating the Constitution when it fails to get a search warrant before tracking people this way. The new revelations about the cell phone tracking program under Christie is yet another example of the warrantless spying programs authorized under the Bush administration.”

What happens when President Obama stumps for even greater powers? Crickets from the left.