Maryland’s second-highest court ruled that Baltimore’s use of a cellphone tracker was illegal, possibly impacting hundreds of other cases.

This is what happens when police are able to spy on people without getting a warrant first. They can listen to whomever they want, then reverse-engineer evidence to then arrest them. They’ve been caught in 200 cases so far.

Why is this bad you ask? Weren’t the people caught committing a crime you ask?

Sure, but we also have something called a Constitution designed to protect us from unlawful searches and seizures of assets where police need to get a warrant from a judge before they start spying on potential crooks. Why do we have this 4th Amendment to our Constitution?

Because prior to having it governments and police would abuse their power and just blanket search large groups of law abiding citizen’s homes and seize assets looking for evidence of any crimes, even if they didn’t suspect those people. Turn people’s homes upside down indiscriminately all day long, and you’re bound to find something wrong, no matter how trivial. This made life hell enough for people that we ended up banning the process in our very own Bill of Rights. That’s why we have the law.

If you want to go ignore our Constitution, which has done a pretty good job up to now of keeping this country somewhat democratic and free, you can’t just do that. That’s why we have this Constitution in the first place, because, what might look harmless on the surface, spying on everyone without warrants, could have, and most likely, will have horrible unintended consequences to our society as a whole down the road.

Police state, anyone?

Absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely as they say, so let’s not give too much power to anyone, as they will most likely start abusing it, especially when they are doing it illegally right from the start!

Original Source: 200 imprisoned based on illegal cellphone tracking