Thursday, October 04, 2007

I'm sorry about your wife, but...

Do we really need to weaken our privacy laws, and rules on search warrants because a woman drove off the road in her Honda Element? I say no.

With Tom Rider at her side, Rahr also said she will push for legislation to ensure missing-persons detectives have better access to cellphone records. She said that if sheriff's detectives had not been held up by having to get a search warrant to obtain Tanya Rider's cellphone records, they would've found the Maple Valley woman three days earlier.

[...]

On Tuesday, Tom Rider said he planned to go to Olympia to deliver a letter to Gov. Christine Gregoire to explain why cellphone-privacy policies almost cost his wife her life. Though the King County Sheriff's Office requested Rider's cellphone records through Verizon on Sept. 24, it wasn't until three days later — after a warrant was obtained — that the information was released.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What would make sense is legislation that would allow a person to designate in advance a second or third party to have access to those records in the event of an emergency so that a subpoena wouldn't be needed.