Governor vetoes location privacy bill

California Gov. Jerry Brown Interview in Brown's office at the state capitol Sacramento California, on Saturday September 15th 2012 By Ken James/SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE California Gov. Jerry Brown Interview in Brown's office at the state capitol Sacramento California, on Saturday September 15th 2012 By Ken James/SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE Photo: Ken James, SFC Photo: Ken James, SFC Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Governor vetoes location privacy bill 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Well, I guess Gov. Jerry Brown had an opinion about that location privacy bill after all.

The governor vetoed a bill that would have required a warrant to access such data. This came despite concerns over escalating law enforcement efforts to tap into location information from cell phones and other devices with little judicial oversight,

Brown's office had previously refused to provide any clue to his thinking on the bill to the media or his constituents.

"I am not convinced," he wrote in a veto message to legislators this weekend, "that this bill strikes the right balance between the operational needs of law enforcement and individual expectations of privacy."

That last part seems to suggest he believes the average smartphone user is fully aware of just how much their location information can reveal about their personal lives and that they anticipate police officers may want to take a peek from time to time. I think that's utterly false.

As I wrote previously:

The concern among ... civil liberties groups like the ACLU of Northern California, which backed the bill, is that location information gathered over smartphones or GPS devices can provide incredibly detailed pictures of our lives. It serves up a map of our daily routines as well as strong hints about our habits, associates, political leanings and even health.

Brown seems to have simply sided with state law enforcement groups, which had strongly opposed the proposal. It would have erected new hurdles around a tactic that police agencies are employing with growing frequency.

Again, as I reported earlier:

Recent public information requests by the ACLU and a subsequent congressional inquiry found wide use of cell phone tracking by law enforcement, under wildly varying standards.

AT&T received more than 260,000 requests for subscriber records in 2011, up 62 percent from 2009, according to its response to the congressional probe. It rejected fewer than 1,000 of the demands last year.

I'm not arguing that police officers should never be able to dig up this information. But if they have a sound basis for prying into an individual's personal data, they should be able to make that case to a judge.