Dog's death leads to a push for quicker tracing of cellphones

After her SUV, phone and dog were stolen at a cemetery last month, Hemet resident Mary Michael tried to get Verizon to track the phone in the vehicle carrying her beloved pet, Rebel.

Verizon said it couldn't do so without a warrant. Rebel was found dead, prompting Michael to take aim at that regulation, The Times' David Kelly reports:

A distraught Michael said Rebel would be alive today if Verizon had traced the cellphone  she had left inside the car.

"They could have saved Rebel's life," she said Tuesday during a news conference outside Riverside County Superior Court. "It's my phone. It has GPS capability. We should be able to use it."

Michael, who is originally from London and lives in Hemet, has started a campaign to make such tracking easier. Many wireless companies now require warrants before tracing phones, but Michael argues that obtaining a warrant takes too long when a life hangs in the balance.

Verizon spokesman Ken Muche said state and federal privacy laws make it impossible to trace a phone without a court order. He said criminals and stalkers had impersonated customers in the past to try to find cellphone users.

"We work with law enforcement and will respond to requests from the court like subpoenas and warrants," Muche said. "We have a policy in place so our customer service people are not in a position of having to determine a person's identity."

Had Verizon traced the phone, it could have pinpointed the location as close as 50 to 100 yards, he said.

That was cold comfort to Michael. "If this had been done, Rebel would not have had to suffer, and we would not be going through the pain of losing her in this terrible way," she said. "I can't bear to think of what she went through during those last hours. I can't go there, it's too horrible."

-- Francisco Vara-Orta

Photo: Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Nedly Mandingo]

Ahh In a perfect world, to bad we don't live in a perfect world and the risk to human life is much higher from stalkers unfaithful spouses and unscrupulous employers if people are so concerned they can do the GPS tracking on there own forcing companies to violate privacy rights is to much for to little the risk greatly outweighs the reward,

[confounded]

In Washington state earlier this year a woman was trapped in her car for over a week because her cell phone company resisted for 4 days revealing her GPS location. She nearly died. Her husband was livid.

What will it take to change this?

[Robert Baldwin]

Hm. What this will actually result in is that you could can be personally tracked by just about anyone with connections or with the dollars to hire them, or a good con artist. If thier dog was that important to them, then they could have gotten a cheap gps tracking collar. If the system is easy and fast enough to use to answer requests to track your dog or lost or cheat'n spouse, it will also be used to for anyone with ill intentions to track you.

"What exactly were you doing taking a long lunch last Thursday in room 4P at the Carona Hotel? We noticed you turned the phone off, but fortunately that model still responds to GPS beacons. Your husband isn't staying there... "

Perhaps not letting scam artists and car thieves out after 6-12 months would cut down on these type of incidents, but
*leaving your car running, with the keys inside, and unlocked*
just may not be a good idea in small, neighborly hamlets like LA.

[Sal B]

And if it had been a child in the car who died, rather than a dog, Verizon would have demanded a warrant and refused to trace the cellphone as well?