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Supreme Court Rules on Cellphone Location Data Collection

Blog 2018 July Supreme Court Rules on Cellphone Location Data Collection
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Supreme Court Rules on Cellphone Location Data Collection

Posted By Stepniak & Park || 10-Jul-2018

In a 5-4 ruling on June 22, the Supreme Court restricted the ability of law enforcement to collect cellphone location history of criminal suspects in a significant win for privacy rights in the digital era and a drawback for police.

Led by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, the courts ruled in favor of Timothy Carpenter (Carpenter v. United States), who was sentenced to a 116-year prison sentence due to his role in a string of armed robberies at in Michigan and Ohio. While law enforcement had witnesses and surveillance footage placing Carpenter at the locations at which the robberies occurred, they also had 127 days’ worth of cellphone location data which tracked Carpenter’s movement, including where he slept and how often he went to church.

The lower courts then ruled in favor of the government, stating that collection of location data was lawful under the “third-party doctrine,” which allow law enforcement to view records without a warrant when people allowed third parties, such as banks or telephone companies, to have them. In other words, customers voluntarily give up their right to privacy for those records.

However, the high court did not see it that way. When the doctrine was created four decades ago, such records were not as revealing and no one fathomed that millions of Americans will carry a small device that could track their every movement.

Chief Justice Roberts wrote:

“Although such records are generated for commercial purposes, that distinction does not negate Carpenter’s anticipation of privacy in his physical location. Mapping a cell phone’s location over the course of 127 days provides an all-encompassing record of the holder’s whereabouts. As with GPS information, the time-stamped data provides an intimate window into a person’s life, revealing not only his particular movements, but through them his ‘familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations.’... And like GPS monitoring, cell phone tracking is remarkably easy, cheap, and efficient compared to traditional investigative tools. With just the click of a button, the Government can access each carrier’s deep repository of historical location information at practically no expense.”

Roberts was joined by the four most liberal justices that make up the majority. By contrast, the four conservative justices dissented.

In recent years, the Supreme Court has taken steps to interpret the Fourth Amendment protection against “unreasonable searches and seizures” to fit today’s technological-reliant society. In 2012, the court restricted the government’s use of GPS devices to track a vehicle. Two years later, it ruled that police cannot search cellphones without a warrant.

For more information about our constitutional rights, contact our Daytona Beach criminal defense attorneys at Law Offices of Robert Stepniak today.

Categories: Criminal Defense, Criminal Law

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