Cell phones are constantly connected to towers. Their location data — which tracks where we went, who we met with, and what we did — is constant. This view into someone’s life is private and police should obtain a warrant to access it, the Electronic Frontier Foundation tells the Supreme Court.
The EFF examined two cases where courts have applied 1970s-era law to digital communications. The advocacy group urged the high court to establish that consumers should expect that their cell phone location data is private and protected by the Constitution against unreasonable searches and seizures, infoZine reports.
Hundreds of thousands of U.S. cell phones translate to some 378 million accounts. Cell-site location data (CSLI) is detailed and kept for years by carriers. Continue reading
Without warrants, police obtained hundreds of days’ worth of location data in U.S. v. Carpenter and U.S. v. Graham — enough to link the defendants in both cases to their crimes and convict them, according to infoZine. Attorneys for the defendants argued the use of CSLI violated their client’s Fourth Amendment rights.
Appeals courts in both cases followed Smith v. Maryland, a case from 1979, when most Americans used landline phones. In that case, the court said people who voluntarily give certain information to third-parties like a bank or telephone company, don’t expect privacy for this information. In short, the government doesn’t need a warrant, according to the account.
But that’s not the same situation today. Cell phone users don’t voluntarily give location data to carriers. “It happens automatically without their control and is generated whether or not the phone is being used,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Jennifer Lynch in a petition filed with the court. Federal courts and judges in several other states have recognized that the so-called “third-party doctrine” doesn’t apply to cell phone location data, she argued, reports infoZine. “It’s time for the Supreme Court to consider whether a decision it made before the existence of commercial cell phones, which are now ubiquitous and reveal our every move, can still be used to override Fourth Amendment protections.”
In 2014, the Supreme Court recognized the amount of personal data stored on a cell phone requires police to obtain warrants before accessing data on a device when someone is arrested. In 2012, the high court held that GPS tracking is a search under the Fourth Amendment.
November 2, 2016
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