Pennsylvania's prosecutors, saying the public's privacy rights are threatened, will ask state lawmakers to close a legal loophole that allows open access to cell-phone and e-mail records.
District attorneys were "shocked" to discover that state law allows lawyers to obtain cell-phone records on behalf of clients through a simple subpoena without court review, said Carbon County District Attorney Gary Dobias, president of the state District Attorneys Association.
The association, meeting in Erie, voted this week to lobby legislators for a change in the law.
The issue became public this week when The Inquirer reported that defense attorneys, searching for the source of grand-jury leaks, legally obtained the cell-phone records of two Dauphin County prosecutors and two state police detectives.
"That's a privacy concern that not only affects district attorneys, but general citizens as well," Dobias said. "These are records that should not be released."
Police officers and prosecutors say disclosure of their calling records is dangerous. Criminals might use them to identity confidential informants, they say.
For the public, prosecutors say, the phone records could be abused in "infinite" ways: Victims of domestic violence could be targeted by their partners. Witnesses in criminal cases could be hunted down.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Angry prosecutors target privacy loophole
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports:
