In When Do You Call an Expert for Cell Phone Data? Leonard Deutchman, Leonard Deutchman, general counsel and administrative partner of LDiscovery, discusses when to hire a telecommunications expert witness:
Cell phone service providers keep records of when telephones transmit to or receive signals from cell towers. Persons familiar with the nomenclature of those records can read them and, if they know a user’s telephone number, determine whether the user’s cell phone was being used within the vicinity of a cell tower on a certain day and at a certain time.
Such use of records is known as “cell phone tracking.” It can be done through records downloaded from cell sites after the fact or in real time; indeed, America became acquainted with the phenomenon on June 17, 1994, during the famous “low speed chase” leading to the arrest of O.J. Simpson, where the suspect’s whereabouts were ascertained in real time by following the cell sites which received signals from and transmitted them to a cell phone in a vehicle in which Simpson was traveling. Since then, it is not hyperbole to state that a week rarely passes without one of the CSI, NCIS, or other detective or police procedural television shows making reference to cell phone tracking.
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