Think you are safe from a cell phone search warrant? http://www.nytimes.com/... I took a call on my way into the driveway one evening last week and spent 48 hours in hell. Swoosh below if you want to read my sad story...
I took a call on my way into the driveway one evening last week. It came in as a blocked call, and as several family members block, I answered it. I found myself talking to a law officer from a small community in a neighboring state. He was trying to get information out of me as I was trying to carefully get information from him. He said he was investigating a case of phone harassment and got my number from a search warrant. He was interested in a number I had texted back two months ago concerning an airport pick-up. I initially was sure he had the wrong number as I only text my offspring and use the phone mainly for work email. As the conversation progressed, it became apparent that the number in question was my college age son's, and the time of interest was him coming home for a few weeks at the end of semester. The officer said that my son's number had received multiple texts during a 4 day period 4 months ago that were part of the investigation and he had obtained a two year warrant for the contents of the phone. At this point I was both freaking out and sure there had to be an error.
Several calls back and forth between me and my son, as well as a friendlier call between me and the officer over the next 24 hours were enough to end the issue. Obviously, my son's phone had been spoofed. The officer was able to assure me that the messages he received were one half of a two-sided conversation and he could tell that the equipment had not sent any texts. Mom chides son for not letting me know he was getting weird texts, son is glad there are no incriminating messages to friends during time period, officer goes away and mom finally gets a good night of sleep.
I am left, however, chewing over several things. It makes me mad as hell to have my privacy violated for someone else's investigation. Surely the officer could get the information necessary to be sure it was an issue of spoofing without a 2 year download of a kid's phone?! He sounded like he had spent days trying to figure out what the random kid texts were about. Why did he contact me as he initially did not know I was related? Was he really just an inexperienced investigator and the phone company or judge too happy to give out warrants and information?