Police Need Warrant To Track Person's Cell Phone: Supreme Court

DETROIT, MI — The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that authorities generally need a search warrant to get location information from cellphone towers. The privacy case centered around a Detroit man, 32-year-old Timothy Carpenter, sentenced to a 116 years in prison in a series of cell phone store robberies, who argued that data from his own cell phone should have not been used against him.

Authorities were able to track Carpenter's locations over 127 days through information provided by wireless carriers. Carpenter argued that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated when the government obtained the records without a warrant.

Prosecutors accused Carpenter of organizing most of the robberies that involved multiple people and were carried out in metro Detroit and Ohio over a two-year period. Cell phone data presented at his trial indicated that he was in the vicinity of robberies when they occurred; That data was collected from cell phone carriers based on the cell phone towers Carpenter's cell phone accessed at the time, the Detroit Free Press reported in 2017 when the Supreme Court decided to hear Carpenter’s case.

Accomplices said Carpenter would be nearby, sending a signal to robbers to enter stores.

Carpenter was sentenced in 2014 in U.S. District Court. On appeal, Carpenter and another defendant, both of whom were represented by the ACLU and other groups, argued that data indicating the locations of their cell phones that was supplied to investigators by wireless carriers should have been excluded from trial, according to the report.

The 5-4 SCOTUS opinion was written by Chief Justice John Roberts siding with the four most liberal justices.

The opinion, which was limited to cell site location data, continues a recent trend at the court to boost privacy rights in the digital era and clarifies court precedent as it applies to data held by a third party.

Image via Shutterstock

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