The Government Can No Longer Track Your Cell Phone Without a Warrant

Jason Koebler (3528235) writes The government cannot use cell phone location data as evidence in a criminal proceeding without first obtaining a warrant, an appeals court ruled today, in one of the most important privacy decisions in recent memory. "In short, we hold that cell site location information is within the subscriber's reasonable expectation of privacy," the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled. "The obtaining of that data without a warrant is a Fourth Amendment violation."

Comments

The US Government can overrule anything

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because an appeal court judge rules that the government can not do something it doesn't mean that the government will oblige to that ruling

The Obama administration is no longer bound by any law, nor the Constitution of the United States - they can overstep anything and overrule anything

They can lie to the congress and get away with it

They can set terrorists free without having to consult the congress, or the courts

The Obama administration does not care about any judge / court / law, because to them, they are ABOVE IT ALL !

Re:The US Government can overrule anything

[cdrudge]

You keep saying Obama administration. It's not one president's or even one person's doing. It's a collective effort of many people across many administrations and congresses.

Re:The US Government can overrule anything

[Anonymous Coward]

You keep saying Obama administration. It's not one president's or even one person's doing. It's a collective effort of many people across many administrations and congresses.

While you're technically right, it would only take 1 sitting president to stop it.

Coincidentally, we currently only have 1 sitting president.

So, when is he going to stop it?

Re:FP?

[CastrTroy]

The wording from the summary is more clear

cannot use cell phone location data as evidence in a criminal proceeding without first obtaining a warrant

So they can't use the tracking data as evidence, but if they use the tracking data to find it where you are, and then sent out some agents to see what you were up to, and found other incriminating evidence, they could present that evidence in court. They could always just say they happened to be in the area. Just the data of you being somewhere probably wouldn't be compelling evidence on it's own anyway, so there probably isn't much of a need to present your cell phone location as evidence if they have real evidence anyway.

Re:FP?

[superwiz]

"There were anonymous reports of possible robbery attempts by someone matching your physical description." Done. Once the police allow themselves to lie, a plausible and court-accepted lie is not hard to come up with.

Re:FP?

[gstoddart]

The illegal evidence still isn't used. They use the legal evidence obtained afterwards.

Which they only gathered initially after using the stuff without probable cause or legal means.

Parellel construction is the fruit of the poisonous tree, because the starting point of the investigation begins with "we have this, we're not legally allowed to have it, but what can we dig up to make it look like we got this legally?".

As far as I'm concerned, it's essentially a legal strategy to allow perjury.

If they had legally obtained information based on probable cause, there would be no issue. What they end up with is something else.