Supreme Court: Warrant Generally Needed To Track Cell Phone Location Data (cnn.com)

daveschroeder writes: The Supreme Court on Friday said the government generally needs a warrant if it wants to track an individual's location through cell phone records over an extended period of time. The ruling [PDF] is a major victory for advocates of increased privacy rights who argued more protections were needed when it comes to the government obtaining information from a third party such as a cell phone company. The 5-4 opinion was written by Chief Justice John Roberts siding with the four most liberal justices. It is a loss for the Justice Department, which had argued that an individual has diminished privacy rights when it comes to information that has been voluntarily shared with someone else.

Comments

Re:Never forget

[schwit1]

Gorsuch didn't like that the Roberts ruling was too vague and incomplete on addressing prior fourth amendment cases.

The Court today says that judges should use Katz’s reasonable expectation of privacy test to decide what Fourth Amendment rights people have in cell-site location information, explaining that “no single rubric definitively resolves which expectations of privacy are entitled to protection.” Ante, at 5. But then it offers a twist. Lower courts should be sure to add two special principles to their Katz calculus: the need to avoid “arbitrary power” and the importance of “plac[ing] obstacles in the way of a too permeating police surveillance.” Ante, at 6 (internal quotation marks omitted). While surely lauda- ble, these principles don’t offer lower courts much guidance. The Court does not tell us, for example, how far to carry either principle or how to weigh them against the legitimate needs of law enforcement. At what point does access to electronic data amount to “arbitrary” authority? When does police surveillance become “too permeating”?

Re:Never forget

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember that the next time some Republican or Trumpist tells you that they're all about the rights of the individual and smaller government. Republicans will always be the party of authoritarianism and the elite.

Came to say exactly this ... they're in favour of small government, except when it comes to the surveillance state, enshrining laws which are pushed by religious people, and protecting the profits of corporations.

They are consistently against privacy, Constitutional rights, and anything which limits government intrusion on your life except for their own special little exemptions to that.

The Republicans serve religion, corporations, and the wealthy -- despite their claims to want to protect individual rights from the government.

And, really, half of them are completely fucking batshit crazy and have given us the "post fact" world where belief and opinion is supposedly just as good as facts and reality.

Re:Never forget

[KixWooder]

and strongly supported by Trump's justice department. Both sides wanted the opposite of this ruling.

Re:Never forget

[magzteel]

The 5-4 opinion was written by Chief Justice John Roberts siding with the four most liberal justices. It is a loss for the Justice Department, which had argued that an individual has diminished privacy rights when it comes to information that has been voluntarily shared with someone else.

So, the liberals on the court voted in favor of your right to privacy and the "conservatives", including Trump's boy Gorsuch, voted that fuck your privacy rights, the police need to track you without a warrant. Also, the Trump Administration argued that your freedom isn't as important as the right of the government to track you.

Remember that the next time some Republican or Trumpist tells you that they're all about the rights of the individual and smaller government. Republicans will always be the party of authoritarianism and the elite.

Did you read the ruling? It's very interesting. This is from the dissent:

"The Court has twice held that individuals have no
Fourth Amendment interests in business records which
are possessed, owned, and controlled by a third party.
United States v. Miller, 425 U. S. 435 (1976); Smith v.
Maryland, 442 U. S. 735 (1979). This is true even when
the records contain personal and sensitive information. So
when the Government uses a subpoena to obtain, for
example, bank records, telephone records, and credit card
statements from the businesses that create and keep these
records, the Government does not engage in a search of
the business’s customers within the meaning of the Fourth
Amendment.

In this case petitioner challenges the Government’s
right to use compulsory process to obtain a now-common
kind of business record: cell-site records held by cell phone
service providers. The Government acquired the records
through an investigative process enacted by Congress.
Upon approval by a neutral magistrate, and based on the
Government’s duty to show reasonable necessity, it authorizes
the disclosure of records and information that are
under the control and ownership of the cell phone service
provider, not its customer. Petitioner acknowledges that
the Government may obtain a wide variety of business
records using compulsory process, and he does not ask the
Court to revisit its precedents. Yet he argues that, under
those same precedents, the Government searched his
records when it used court-approved compulsory process to
obtain the cell-site information at issue here.

Cell-site records, however, are no different from the
many other kinds of business records the Government has
a lawful right to obtain by compulsory process. Customers
like petitioner do not own, possess, control, or use the
records, and for that reason have no reasonable expectation
that they cannot be disclosed pursuant to lawful
compulsory process.

The Court today disagrees. It holds for the first time
that by using compulsory process to obtain records of a
business entity, the Government has not just engaged in
an impermissible action, but has conducted a search of the
business’s customer. The Court further concludes that the
search in this case was unreasonable and the Government
needed to get a warrant to obtain more than six days of
cell-site records. "

Re: Both party this. Neither passes laws protectin

[Anonymous Coward]

The only major bills protecting rights which come to mind are the Civil Rights Acts, which barred racial discrimination.

Oh? Is that a defect in your civics education or a cognition problem?

Tell us what is wrong with your mind.

Of course, those were pushed by Republicans, with Democrats fighting against them, including a filibuster by Grand Dragon Robert Byrd, the only person Democrats elected to Congress for 55 years straight.

Actually, it was Democrats who wrote and sponsored the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Republicans ignored the issue for almost a century(since the election of 1876) and decided to march to the tune set by Goldwater and Reagan shortly after this law. That's why they embraced Strom Thurmond and wished he had won in 1948.

As a party, they really don't give a shit.

I'm beginning to think you've been miseducated.

The Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act were quite a while ago now. Why hasn't Congress done anything significant to protect Constitutional rights since then?

Somebody needs to read the Congressional ledger. Try 103-141, 101-366, 102-166, and then go stop being ignorant.

Or you know, go see a doctor for brain surgery.

Re:Both party this. Neither passes laws protecting

[Prien715]

The only major bills protecting rights which come to mind are the Civil Rights Acts, which barred racial discrimination. Of course, those were pushed by Republicans, with Democrats fighting against them, including a filibuster by Grand Dragon Robert Byrd, the only person Democrats elected to Congress for 55 years straight.

You're missing the part about it being Democrats introducing it, a Democratic president signing it, and how most (somehow Byrd stayed on) of the racists fled the Democrats into the waiting arms of the Republicans. The result was the openly racist Southern Strategy which persists as part of the GOP electoral map and campaign strategy to this day.

I did like the part about Byrd though -- didn't know that