Supreme Court To Decide Whether Police Need Warrants To Track Suspects Using Their Cell Phone Records

Roll Call reports:

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide a major privacy rights case about whether police must get a warrant to obtain historical cellphone records to track someone’s location and movements.

The case centers on the increasingly detailed information that companies keep on texts and calls to and from a cellphone, as well as the relatively precise location that can be gleaned from that information.

The question is whether cellphone users can expect that data to remain private and subject to the Fourth Amendment’s protection from unreasonable searches and seizures. In this case, investigators did not need a warrant to obtain more than five months of cellphone location information on Michigan robbery suspect Timothy Carpenter.

Instead, they used a federal law ( PL 99-508 ) that governs digital business records. To get a warrant for the information, investigators would have had to establish probable cause, a more difficult standard to meet.

Carpenter is being represented by the ACLU.