Supreme Court protects phone-data privacy rights

Law enforcement must get a warrant in order to conduct long-term monitoring of a person’s location by cell phone

The United States Supreme Court on Friday handed down a victory for the digital privacy rights of individuals when it ruled that police and law enforcement agencies must get a warrant to obtain phone location data to be used as evidence in a trial.

And the high court’s decision may end up having an effect on a similar case in California that is still waiting for a ruling in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In the case Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court wrote in its 5-4 decision, that individuals should be able to expect aspects of their their digital phone conversations, and other instances of digital-based communication, to be protected under of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. That’s the Amendment that requires law-enforcement and government agencies to issue a warrant prior to conducting a probable-cause search of a person’s property.

The case dates back to a 2011 robbery in Detroit. In that case, police used 127 days of phone location data to track the movements of Timothy Carpenter without first obtaining a warrant to access his phone records.

“We hold that an individual maintains a legitimate expectation of privacy in the record of his physical movements as captured through CSLI (cell-site location information),” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts, in the Court’s majority opinion. “Although such (cell phone) records are generated for commercial purposes, that distinction does not negate Carpenter’s anticipation of privacy in his physical location.”

The Court’s decision overturns a ruling that had been handed down by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Andrew Crocker, staff attorney with the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit digital rights group, called the Court’s ruling on the Carpenter case “a major victory” for the privacy rights of individuals.

“We’re still analyzing the opinion, but the Court sent a strong message by recognizing that cell phone tracking has the capability to lay private lives bare to government inspection,” Crocker said. “Equally as important, the Court rejected the government’s tired argument that sensitive data held by third parties is automatically devoid of constitutional protection.”

Crocker said the Carpenter ruling could end up im-

pacting a similar case in San Francisco that dates back six years.

That case, United States of America v. Antonio Gilton, involves a murder from 2012 in which the San Francisco Police Department obtained search warrants for 37 days of Gilton’s cellphone records as part the department’s

investigation. Gilton sued on the grounds that the warrants didn’t provide a substantial basis for probable cause to search his phone records. The U.S. District Court found in favor of Gilton, and the government has appealed the case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is headquartered in San Francisco.

While the ruling could have widespread implications for the issue of digital privacy rights, Roberts said

the Court’s decision was a narrow one.

Roberts said the ruling doesn’t affect other matters not before the Court, “or call into question conventional surveillance techniques and tools, such as security cameras; does not address other business records that might incidentally reveal location information; and does not consider other collection techniques involving foreign affairs or national security.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy,