US Court Says No Warrant Needed For Cellphone Location Data (reuters.com)

Dustin Volz, reporting for Reuters: Police do not need a warrant to obtain a person's cellphone location data held by wireless carriers, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Tuesday, dealing a setback to privacy advocates. The full 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, voted 12-3 that the government can get the information under a decades-old legal theory that it had already been disclosed to a third party, in this case a telephone company. The ruling overturns a divided 2015 opinion from the court's three-judge panel and reduces the likelihood that the Supreme Court would consider the issue. The decision arose from several armed robberies in Baltimore and Baltimore County, Maryland, in early 2011, leading to the convictions of Aaron Graham and Eric Jordan. The convictions were based in part on 221 days of cellphone data investigators obtained from wireless provider Sprint, which included about 29,000 location records for the defendants, according to the appeals court opinion.

Comments

Why would this make it less likely that the SC wou

[MobyDisk]

The ruling overturns a divided 2015 opinion from the court's three-judge panel and reduces the likelihood that the Supreme Court would consider the issue.

Why would this make it less like that the SC would consider the issue? From a google search of stories on Slashdot, I see courts ruling differently on this issue in several jurisdictions. That seems to solidify that the Supreme Court would take this up.
Slashdot stories on cellphone location data rulings. Here are 3 cases where courts ruled differently than today's ruling. The US 4th district doesn't include Florida, for example, which ruled otherwise.
https://yro.slashdot.org/story...
https://news.slashdot.org/stor...
https://yro.slashdot.org/story...

Except whoops, the Supreme court is neutered right now and can't make any decisions... :-(

Why not get a warrant?

[TechyImmigrant]

Given that they were investigating armed robberies, why on Earth didn't they just get a warrant instead of spending all that taxpayer money fighting court cases to be able to do so without getting a warrant?

Re:Why not get a warrant?

[mADneSs]

Setting precedent via an (ostensibly) easy win?

Time to read the 4th

[fyngyrz]

The fourth amendment says nothing about "third parties." Not one word.

This is just more judicial activism continuing to bite the citizens in the posterior.

Reasonable = probable cause, oath or affirmation, description(s) of place to be searched and item(s) to be seized, which allow for a warrant to be issued. Anything else = UNreasonable.

Anything the justices say to the contrary is in direct violation of their oath of office.

Not that there's any surprise in that.

Re:Time to read the 4th

[The New Guy 2.0]

Police: Can you give us your location data for all your users?
Webmaster: Sure.
Court: Valid information sharing...

Re:Time to read the 4th

[Anonymous Coward]

The fourth amendment says nothing about "third parties." Not one word.

The fourth amendment also doesn't say anything about Wednesday being Prince Spaghetti day, but that doesn't mean it isn't.

Here's what the fourth amendment says, specifically:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,[a] against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

So. What you need to do to argue that this policy contradicts the fourth amendment is that this constitutes an unreasonable search. What the government claims is that you have no "reasonable" expectation of privacy, given that the signals are "information" that is transferred to a third party. That is, since you are sending this information to a third party (your cellular provider), then you have no reasonable expectation that that information is private. In much the same way, you couldn't reasonably expect your return address to be "private" information if you wrote it in plain view on the corner of an envelope that you then dropped into a post box. The government is NOT arguing that they should be able to listen to your phone calls without a warrant.

Now, you can certainly argue that there should be a reasonable expectation of privacy for that data, but simply asserting that "it isn't, because fourth amendment doesn't say anything about it" is insufficient to make that case. The case law surrounding the 4th amendment is extensive, and largely based on establishing the scope of a reasonable "societal expectation" of privacy. If you try to ignore it, you will lose your argument.

Re:Time to read the 4th

[ShanghaiBill]

Not when it is supplied to a third party, in this case Sprint.

You could say the same thing about data shared with your doctor, your bank, or your lawyer. Disclosing information to a 3rd party does not make it "theirs".

There is a simple test for whether the police need a warrant: Would a normal citizen have legal access to the information? If anyone can go to a cell carrier and get location data on anyone else, then the police should be able to do the same. Otherwise, they should need a warrant.

Re:Time to read the 4th

[Anonymous Coward]

Except the police generally cannot compel 3rd parties to stand on the street, making a note of every non-homeless person on the street, and then DEMAND their notes. That's what happens here. Sprint et al aren't volunteering this data they're being serviced with a non-warrant court order, an NSL, or whatever. It's EXACTLY the sort of police state that the 4th amendment is designed to halt.
Hell, the cell carriers would not even be storing this data, which is useless to them, if they weren't forced to do so. They need to know location for cell tower purposes, but once you're in a new zone, the old zones aren't useful. Except, of course, for the spying bullshit.

Re:SCOTUS size

[fyngyrz]

Also, it's worth noting that they made it the law that your phone HAD to give out location information. 911 and all that.

So:

step 1: force phones to give up location
step 2: claim that because phone location is given up, it's not subject to the 4th

...and yet, congress keeps getting re-elected at a 90%+ rate, and there are still lots of people who respect our supreme court. Sigh.

Ummmm...

[DigitAl56K]

The full 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, voted 12-3 that the government can get the information under a decades-old legal theory that it had already been disclosed to a third party, in this case a telephone company

... with whom I have a contract that ought to contain privacy terms and a disclaimer than certain information may be provided to law enforcement only under due legal process, i.e. a warrant.

knowingly and willingly surrender information ...

[schwit1]

The decision is predicated on the suggestion that cell phone users willingly surrendering information. How is this willingly when a cell phone has become a necessity and there's no way to disable it and keep the phone on.