A privacy victory

Technology is outrunning the legal system, a realization that the U.S. Supreme Court is hustling to fix. In a ruling built on the Constitution and cell phones, the justices are dialing down law enforcement’s easy access to data culled from transmission towers.

The upshot is a modernized view of privacy. The government will need a warrant in most cases to go after information that can amount to a diary of a person’s phone calls and travels collected from cell phone towers.

Such a trove is a godsend for law enforcement, which can request digital records on a person’s whereabouts in building a criminal case. That’s exactly what prosecutors did in convicting a Detroit store robber, whose proximity to a string of crime scenes was found in transmission tower records.

But a 5-to-4 high court ruling determined that without a warrant, such a phone-record grab went too far, a violation of Fourth Amendment protections from unreasonable searches. A phone is the equivalent of a wallet, camera, TV set, library and record keeper, Chief Justice John Roberts noted. The government is obliged to get a warrant to see phone traffic.

There’s a flip side to the ruling. Law enforcement should be able to take advantage of a crime-fighting tool such as digital data. The Roberts majority, composed of the conservative top judge and four liberal justices, said the government should get a warrant in most cases while allowing hot pursuit access in pressing cases.

The latest case follows two earlier ones that underscore worries about the loss of digital privacy, a fear of many consumers. The court ruled against police using GPS devices to track suspects and a requirement for a warrant to search cell phones. The Constitution’s framing language is finding a present-day voice.