Defense lawyers for Terrance Brown, a south Florida man facing bank robbery charges, have asked for NSA mobile phone surveillance records to be supplied in order to support his claim that he was not in the vicinity of the bank at the time it was robbed. He’s referring to the leaked court order revealing that the NSA requires American phone companies to turn over the complete records of all their calls, including the location data about the callers.
The prosecution had told defense attorneys that they were unable to obtain Brown’s cellphone records from the period before September 2010 because his carrier, MetroPCS, had not held on to them.
Not so fast, Brown’s attorney Marshall Dore Louis argued in court documents filed in Fort Lauderdale days after the National Security Agency surveillance program was revealed last week…
…Louis argued in court Wednesday that the government should be forced to turn over phone location records for two cellphones Brown may have used because it could prove he was not present for one of the attempted bank robberies, on July 26 on Federal Highway in Lighthouse Point.
“The president of the United States has recognized this program has been ongoing since 2006 … to gather the phone numbers [and related information] of everybody including my client in 2010,” Louis said.
Bank robbery suspect wants NSA phone records for his defense [Paula McMahon/Sun Sentinel]