[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 27 (Wednesday, February 15, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1219-S1220]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. WYDEN:
  S. 395. A bill to amend title 18, United States Code, to specify the 
circumstances in which a person may acquire geolocation information and 
for

[[Page S1220]]

other purposes; to the Committee on the Judiciary.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today I, along with my colleagues 
Congressmen Chaffetz from Utah and Conyers from Michigan, am 
introducing the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act, a bill that 
protects Americans from seeing their phones and other devices turned 
into location trackers without so much as a warrant or a warning. While 
law enforcement agencies can and have obtained, and should obtain, 
probable cause search warrants from a neutral judge authorizing them to 
track the location of Americans, in many other cases, government 
agencies obtain sensitive location information without a warrant. My 
colleagues, Mr. Chaffetz and Conyers, and I intend to fix that.
  This is a situation where government agencies' use of new technology 
has gotten ahead of the laws in ways that would surprise many 
Americans. Federal, State, and local agencies routinely track 
Americans' locations through a variety of methods, most of the time 
without people knowing they are being tracked. Some tracking demands go 
directly from the government to phone companies. In the first 6 months 
of 2016, law enforcement agencies submitted at least 86,000 demands to 
telephone companies for subscriber location data. Some of these demands 
were for the records of hundreds or even thousands of customers at a 
time.
  Law enforcement agencies also regularly track cell phones with the 
use of a surveillance technology known as a cell site simulator or 
Stingray. A recent bipartisan report by the Committee on Oversight and 
Government Reform in the House of Representatives found that the 
Departments of Justice and Homeland Security have spent more than $95 
million to buy over 430 Stingrays. Although Federal agencies now obtain 
warrants before using this technology, many State and local agencies do 
not.
  There is currently no uniform legal standard that regulates how 
Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies are able to spy on 
the location of Americans. Instead, there exists a confusing patchwork 
of State laws, policies adopted by law enforcement agencies, and legal 
precedents set by Federal and State courts. As a result, Americans in 
one part of the country may enjoy less privacy, based on the policies 
adopted by their local police department, privacy laws passed by their 
State legislatures, or the willingness of their phone provider to push 
back in court, than Americans who happen to live in a privacy-superior 
jurisdiction. This patchwork quilt of rules and regulations has led to 
confusion among law enforcement, prosecutors, and service providers, 
who waste valuable time and resources litigating and appealing what 
should be clear-cut rules--clear-cut rules that start from the premise 
that privacy is an inviolable right, not a convenience granted by local 
law enforcement.
  Under President Obama, there was a policy in place that required 
Federal law enforcement officers to get a probable cause warrant before 
tracking an American's location. Under the current administration, we 
do not yet know if this policy will remain, which makes this bill even 
more critical.
  This bill has three main components.
  First, it requires the government to show probable cause and get a 
warrant before acquiring the geolocational information of a U.S. 
person, while setting out clear exceptions such as emergency or 
national security situations or cases of theft or fraud. This probable 
cause requirement would apply to all law enforcement acquisitions of 
the geolocational information of individual Americans without their 
knowledge. This requirement will include indirect location information 
acquisition from commercial service providers and direct acquisitions 
using Stingrays and similar devices, including tracking devices 
covertly installed by the government. This bill would regulate both 
real-time tracking of a person's movements, as well as the acquisition 
of records of past movements.
  Second, the bill creates criminal penalties for secretly using an 
electronic device to track a person's movements that parallel those for 
wiretapping. Currently, if a woman's ex-husband taps her phone, he is 
breaking the law. This legislation would treat hacking her cell phone 
to track her movements as a similar offense.
  Finally, it prohibits commercial service providers from sharing 
customers' geolocation information with outside entities without 
customer consent.
  Passage of this bill would provide much needed privacy protections to 
Americans and ensure that location data is adequately protected from 
warrantless surveillance by law enforcement agencies.
  I thank my colleagues Chaffetz and Conyers for their efforts on this 
bill, and I hope the Judiciary Committee will consider our proposal 
quickly.
                                 ______