The US Supreme Court has ruled that a warrant must be obtained before mobile phone location data can be seized or tracked.
The applicant, Mr Timothy Carpenter, was one of a number of individuals who were suspected of being involved in several armed robberies. One of the men involved confessed to the crimes and allowed the police access to his cell phone. The cell phone was used to gain the phone numbers of the other individuals involved in the robberies, including Mr Carpenter. The police also obtained cell phone location data of Mr Carpenter, which allowed them to place the applicant within half a mile to two miles of each robbery. Mr Carpenter requested that the location data not be used in court due to his rights under the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment states that people have the right to be secure ‘against unreasonable searches and seizures’ and that warrants are only to be granted ‘upon probable cause.’
The request to suppress the data was denied by the District Court and Mr Carpenter was convicted. Mr Carpenter appealed to the Sixth Circuit challenging the decision of the District Court in allowing the cell phone data location. He argued that a warrant should have been obtained before police accessed his location data, and that the acquisition of the data without a warrant was unconstitutional. The Sixth Circuit rejected the arguments and stated that the Fourth Amendment did not cover the location data.
In June 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the decision of the Sixth Circuit.
Chief Justice Roberts delivered the judgement citing two leading cases, the Miller case in which it was found by the court that there was ‘no expectation of privacy for bank records’, and the Smith case, in which the court also found that there was no expectation of privacy for phone company records. Justice Roberts then considered whether a warrant would be need to acquire the mobile phone location data. The Court found that phone records are unique and even though information may be held by a third party it does not ‘overcome the user’s claim to Fourth Amendment protection’.
The Court concluded that access to such data permitted police to conduct “near perfect” surveillance of an individual’s physical movements, “as if it had attached an ankle monitor to the phone’s user” “not for a short period but for years and years.” This access was found to amount to an invasion of “the privacies of life” with the potential to reveal “familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations.” Justice Roberts ruled that a warrant should be obtained if police wish to acquire location data and returned the case to the lower courts.
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