High court to address digital-age question

Is it legal to track a suspect through cellphone records without a warrant?

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court next term will decide whether law enforcement authorities need a warrant to track a suspect through his cellphone records, justices announced Monday.

The case seeks to resolve a digital-age question that has divided lower courts relying on past Supreme Court precedents about privacy.

“Only this court can provide the guidance they seek about whether and how a doctrine developed long before the digital age applies to the voluminous and sensitive digital records at issue here,” wrote American Civil Liberties Union lawyers representing Timothy Carpenter.

Investigating a string of armed robberies in the Midwest in 2010 and 2011, a prosecutor sought access to more than five months of historical cellphone location records for Carpenter, his lawyers said.

Law enforcement officials did not seek warrants based on probable cause, but asked for the records under the Stored Communications Act. According to Carpenter’s lawyers, such orders may be granted when the government has “reasonable grounds to believe that” the records sought “are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation.”

Carpenter was convicted of six robberies after testimony that the cellphone tower records showed him in the vicinity.

On appeal, a divided three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit said that no warrants were needed for the records because Carpenter “had no reasonable expectation of privacy in cellphone location records held by his service provider.”

The Justice Department had asked the court not to accept the case, saying Carpenter had not shown that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated.