IRS Use of Cell Phone Location Data Hits ‘Legal Gray Area’ (1)

A government watchdog’s probe into Internal Revenue Service use of cell phone location data is likely to run into legal uncertainty about privacy protections for the data.

Government agencies typically need a search warrant to obtain cell phone location data on a specific person over a set period of time, said Faiza Patel, co-director of the Brennan Center’s liberty and national security program. Privacy protections are less clear for anonymized data an agency purchases from a third party, she said.

“That sets up a legal gray area in which it’s not 100% clear that a warrant would be required,” Patel ...