Supreme Court affirms privacy rights of cellphone users in 'Big Brother' case
By Bill Mears | Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...ghts-cellphone-users-in-big-brother-case.html
The Justice Department suffered a digital age defeat Friday at the Supreme Court, which sided with the privacy rights of cellphone users in a dispute over tracking their movements by law enforcement.
In a 5-4 ruling, the court said police generally need a search warrant if they want to track criminal suspects' movements with cellphone data.
Chief Justice John Roberts cast the deciding vote.
At issue is whether the Constitution's Fourth Amendment requires a search warrant for the government to access a person's cellphone location history. It is the latest foray by the justices into how laws should be tailored to keep up with technological advances.
The stakes were enormous, since this judicial precedent could be applied more broadly, including government access to Internet, bank, credit card, and telephone records.
Civil rights and privacy advocates argued current rules open the doors to state abuse of a citizen's everyday activities in public and private spaces. An estimated 300,000 communications towers across the U.S. allow pinpoint accuracy as to where cellphones and those using them have been.
But the U.S. Justice Department, supported by a number of states, said if consumers knowingly give their data to third parties -- including cellphone providers -- their privacy rights are diminished. That would permit police to request the transmission data without a warrant.
The current appeal was brought by Timothy Carpenter, who was arrested for being part of a store robbery gang in Michigan and Ohio. He and a co-conspirator were convicted in part after police obtained archived cell phone records showing him near the scene of the crimes. Nearly 13,000 so-called "location points" from six months of Carpenter's movements were obtained without warrant.
His 116-year prison term was upheld by a federal appeals court. He wanted the digital evidence dismissed, and his conviction overturned.
The government argued that under a 1986 congressional law known as the Stored Communications Act, it does not need "probable cause" to obtain archived customer records kept by the phone companies for business purposes.
Separately, police surveillance tracking of real-time movements-- or wiretapping the actual conversations of a criminal suspect-- still typically requires a judge's authorization.
The high court has been grappling with the so-called "third party" doctrine since 1976, when it ruled bank records obtained without a warrant could be used to prosecute a Georgia moonshiner. The justices extended it three years later to include phone numbers used by a robbery suspect, though not the actual conversations themselves.
In 2012, the Supreme Court unanimously said police could not attach a GPS device on the car of a suspected drug dealer to track his movements. Two years later, the justices separately and unanimously ruled police need a warrant to search a cellphone that is seized during an arrest.
But unlike those cases, in the Carpenter appeal there was no "physical intrusion" of the device, raising questions whether one's privacy was in fact being violated.
By Bill Mears | Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...ghts-cellphone-users-in-big-brother-case.html
The Justice Department suffered a digital age defeat Friday at the Supreme Court, which sided with the privacy rights of cellphone users in a dispute over tracking their movements by law enforcement.
In a 5-4 ruling, the court said police generally need a search warrant if they want to track criminal suspects' movements with cellphone data.
Chief Justice John Roberts cast the deciding vote.
At issue is whether the Constitution's Fourth Amendment requires a search warrant for the government to access a person's cellphone location history. It is the latest foray by the justices into how laws should be tailored to keep up with technological advances.
The stakes were enormous, since this judicial precedent could be applied more broadly, including government access to Internet, bank, credit card, and telephone records.
Civil rights and privacy advocates argued current rules open the doors to state abuse of a citizen's everyday activities in public and private spaces. An estimated 300,000 communications towers across the U.S. allow pinpoint accuracy as to where cellphones and those using them have been.
But the U.S. Justice Department, supported by a number of states, said if consumers knowingly give their data to third parties -- including cellphone providers -- their privacy rights are diminished. That would permit police to request the transmission data without a warrant.
The current appeal was brought by Timothy Carpenter, who was arrested for being part of a store robbery gang in Michigan and Ohio. He and a co-conspirator were convicted in part after police obtained archived cell phone records showing him near the scene of the crimes. Nearly 13,000 so-called "location points" from six months of Carpenter's movements were obtained without warrant.
His 116-year prison term was upheld by a federal appeals court. He wanted the digital evidence dismissed, and his conviction overturned.
The government argued that under a 1986 congressional law known as the Stored Communications Act, it does not need "probable cause" to obtain archived customer records kept by the phone companies for business purposes.
Separately, police surveillance tracking of real-time movements-- or wiretapping the actual conversations of a criminal suspect-- still typically requires a judge's authorization.
The high court has been grappling with the so-called "third party" doctrine since 1976, when it ruled bank records obtained without a warrant could be used to prosecute a Georgia moonshiner. The justices extended it three years later to include phone numbers used by a robbery suspect, though not the actual conversations themselves.
In 2012, the Supreme Court unanimously said police could not attach a GPS device on the car of a suspected drug dealer to track his movements. Two years later, the justices separately and unanimously ruled police need a warrant to search a cellphone that is seized during an arrest.
But unlike those cases, in the Carpenter appeal there was no "physical intrusion" of the device, raising questions whether one's privacy was in fact being violated.
