Mr. Adam Liptak, reporter for The New York Times, recently wrote a compelling article on the unparalleled amount of warrant requests used by law enforcement agencies through the judicial system. For the most part, the American public is unaware that in 2011, cellphone carriers were hit with approximately 1.3 million requests for subscriber information, which for the most part were granted by an issuing judge or magistrate. A U.S. Magistrate in Houston, TX, recently wrote a law review article where he questioned the lack of transparency and efficacy in these secret courts. In an interview for the article, Judge Stephen W. Smith stated:
Courts do things in public[…]That’s the way we maintain our legitimacy. As citizens, we need to know how law enforcement is using this power.”
Law enforcement agencies need such a low bar to establish probable cause for a warrant to be issued, that very rarely is a request for a warrant to obtain electronic records denied. According to Judge Smith’s article, there were more surveillance orders in 2006 than the combination of antitrust, employment discrimination, environmental, copyright, patent, trademark, and securities cases filed. As Mr. Liptak points out in his review of Judge Smith’s comments, “[f]or his part, Judge Smith has proposed some modest fixes. At some point, people whose records have been inspected should be told. At some point, secret court orders should be unsealed. Comprehensive data should be collected, to ‘allow the press and public to better understand the extent of government intrusion into our digital lives.'”