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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.
A few years ago I had been drafted into jury duty for the 9th circuit in California. The case involved some sort of Medicare scam involving bogus sales of medical "devices" such as mobility scooters. During the jury selection process, prosecutors asked the pool whether any prospective jurors took issue with warrantless location tracking via cell phone towers. Apparently I was the only person who took issue with this, because the other 71 people in the room did not raise their hands. My public conversation with the court went something like this:
Prosecutor: Why do you take exception to warrantless location tracking?
Me: I believe the 3rd party doctrine is being abused in a manner that is unconstitutional and therefore illegal
Judge: I will decide what is legal and illegal, and your job is to decide innocence or guilt
Me: Richard Nixon once declared that "if the President does it, it's not illegal". We all know how that turned out. I will decide for myself whether the spirit of the Constitution is being violated
Jurors were then adjourned while the judge, prosecutor, and defense attorney negotiated a jury pool. The pool was then welcomed back into the room, and I was thanked for my service, but then dismissed.
It's nice to see the Supreme Court finally came to the same conclusion.
I admire your restraint. I think I'd have probably responded to the judge's statement by replying that John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, disagreed with his statement.
I'm a bit surprised that Roberts voted as he did, but it's a happy surprise.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
If only people like yourself would actually read the material rather than just skim for confirmation bias. We would have never had a President Trump. Alas even in opposition to Trump you and many like you are revealed as the problem rather than the solution.
A simple read of Gorsuch's dissenting opinion shows how you are wrong.
including Trump's boy Gorsuch, voted that fuck your privacy rights,
Did you even read his argument as to why he dissented? Obviously not, otherwise you'd know that he did because he felt that the other opinions were too vague in order to be in favor of it. Go on, read it. Dust off that annotated copy of rulings, and you'll figure it out. When you do, you'll also figure out why you look like an idiot to anyone who's studied law.
Om, nomnomnom...
You're absolutely right, this case was mostly handled under the Obama administration, and the Trump administration could have chosen not to defend it.
It occurs to me that the legislature is supposed to pass laws saying what people can't do, including cops. The Constitution, as interpreted by SCOTUS, is the BARE MINIMUM protection that Congress and state legislatures MUST respect. Why the heck are we living under the bare minimum respect for our rights? Why has no state, under either party, ever passed a law saying cops must respect our rights by ... (not doing mass surveillance or whatever)? Neither Democrats nor Republicans hardly ever pass laws protecting our Constitutional rights. Instead, they both push the limits of how far they can go toward violating our rights.
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.
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?
That's the thing about the supreme court, once appointed "for life" the members don't always follow the stereotypical patterns anymore
Also they tend to stick to some core ideals even if the general voting public has swayed their opinions over time and normal politicians are following along. Some a justice who may have been seen solid defender of conservative values a decade or two ago starts to face criticism of being too liberal since the litmus tests keep changing.
In general, protection of privacy from the government has been a solid conservative value for a very long time, it's only more recently that some strong strong law-and-order types are giving increased government power more priority than their stated conservative ideals. After all, you get more votes by promising to do something about crime than you can get by sticking to conservative ideals. If Reagan showed up today he'd be accused of being a RINO.
More likely he wanted to pay back the Republicans for holding Scalia's seat empty for a year so he could be nominated by an illegitimate president.
You are welcome on my lawn.