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ACLU affiliates across America requested information on local law enforcement's use of cell-phone tracking across the nation and have received a wealth of disturbing information about the extent of wireless tracking. They have produced a map showing which police departments were discovered to be tracking people's phones without a warrant.

Federal law enforcement agencies have been tracking Americans in real-time using credit cards, loyalty cards and travel reservations without getting court orders for the "hotwatch."

A federal appeals court said Tuesday the government may obtain cell-site information that mobile phone carriers retain on their customers without a probable-cause warrant under the Fourth Amendment.

Appeals court rules law enforcement agencies don't need a warrant to "ping" and track prepaid cellphone locations.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/08/warrantless-gps-phone-tracking/
http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/12a0262p-06.pdf

Two years ago, when the FBI was stymied by a band of armed robbers known as the "Scarecrow Bandits" that had robbed more than 20 Texas banks, it came up with a novel method of locating the thieves.

If Americans aren’t disturbed by phone carriers’ practices of handing over cell phone users’ personal data to law enforcement en masse–in many cases without a warrant–we might at least be interested to learn just how much that service is costing us in tax dollars: often hundreds or thousands per individual snooped.

The speedier check-in is limited to cell phone customers who can access the mobile Web on their phones, a release explained. And, at least for the time being, Delta’s test only applies to domestic travelers flying out of LaGuardia.

Several months ago, as a way to prevent the use of cellular phones in criminal activities, the government of Mexico started a program to require all phone owners to register cell phones in their own names. The registry associates each phone with the listed owner's Clave Unica de Registro de Poblacion (CURP) [CURP, in English], which is supposed to be a unique ID for every Mexican citizen.

Law enforcement agencies in the U.S. made more than 1.3 million requests for consumers’ cellphone records in 2011, an alarming surge over previous years that reflected the increasingly gray area between privacy and technology. Cellphone carriers, responding to inquiries from a member of Congress, reported responding to as many as thousands of police requests daily for customers’ locations, text messages and call details, frequently without warrants.