Is Middletown's Version of Big Brother Tracking Your Cell Phone ?

Last week BlueJersey posted a slightly misleading blurb about how, according to the ACLU, police departments in New Jersey were tracking cell phones without warrants. The post listed 50 police departments from around the State that allegedly were illegally tracking the cell phones of local residents. Middletown's police department was one of the 50 on the list, which intrigued me. So I dug a little deeper by following the hyperlink to the ACLU's report to see what it was all about.

What I found out was that the American Civil Liberties Union "filed over 380 requests in 31 states with local law enforcement agencies large and small to uncover when, why and how they are using cell phone location data to track Americans". The results from these requests varied greatly and is a cause for concern for privacy advocates. All but 10 out of 200 responding police departments stated that they track cell phones in some capacity and it was found that most police departments do not usually obtain warrants before tracking cell phones.

After reading this I jumped over to the section of the report that pertained to the 50 police departments in New Jersey.  I found that the reason why these particular 50 were chosen was for no other reason other than, they were the 50 largest police departments in the state and not because they were suspected of wrong doing.

Each of the 50 police departments were sent an identical Cell Phone Tracking Information Request Letter (this is Middletown's) seeking information on how each department gathers cell phone data, all but 4 (Bayonne, Edison, Jersey City and Union City) responded. 

Besides Middletown's response, I also read the responses East Brunswick, Howell, Jackson, Lakewood, Newark and Old Bridge.

There is a lot that can be said after reading the various responses above but I'm fairly convinced that a vast majority of residents living in Middletown,as well as around the state, have little to fear at the moment from Big Brother. There seems to be general proceedures in place that would safeguard against unnecessary phone tracking


However that may not be always be the case.


 In most instances, nearly 3/4 of the questions asked by the ACLU went unanswered due to the lack of a policy concerning cell phone tracking or adequate record keeping.

According to Middletown's response,the last known case in which they tracked a person's cell phone was in 2008. I find that a little hard to believe considering other towns had shown that such information as recently as last year.

That being said, I won't lose to much sleep at the moment worring about who is looking at my phone records. It may be a big issue in parts of the country,but for right now I have nothing to fear and neither do fellow Middletowners, we all seem safe from the prying eyes of Big Brother,