No Warrant Needed for Cellphone Location Data, Court Says

A federal appellate court says Americans voluntarily share such information.

By Tom Risen | Staff Writer
May 31, 2016, at 6:06 p.m.

Authorities don't need a warrant to obtain cellphone users' locations, a federal court ruled Tuesday. AFP/GETTY IMAGES

A U.S. appeals court ruled Tuesday that authorities do not need a warrant to procure information showing where a person has used his or her cellphone.

The 12-3 ruling by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that historical information collected by cellphone towers is not protected under the Fourth Amendment because wireless subscribers voluntarily share their whereabouts with a wireless carrier.

RELATED CONTENT

Study: Spying Using Phone Call Records Is Easy


The case dealt with evidence used in the past robbery-related convictions of suspects Aaron Graham and Eric Jordan. Authorities did not obtain a warrant to collect 221 days of historical cell-site location information from Sprint for each suspect; the data offered thousands of location points and placed the defendants in the vicinity of armed robberies in question.

The government's case asserted an established legal approach that Americans cannot expect privacy protection for information shared with third-party companies such as banks and credit card companies.

In agreeing that no warrant was needed to access the information, the 4th Circuit's majority overturned an earlier 2-1 panel opinion by the same court and stated that while Congress or the Supreme Court may one day limit that legal doctrine, such data collection does not violate the Constitution.

A cellphone user "is permitting – indeed, requesting – his service provider to establish a connection between his phone and a nearby cell tower," Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote in the majority opinion. "A cellphone user thus voluntarily conveys the information necessary for his service provider to identify the [cell-site location information] for his calls and texts."

In a dissenting opinion, Judges James Wynn, Henry Floyd and Stephanie Thacker argued that location data is not "voluntarily conveyed" to the phone company, according to the Supreme Court.


RELATED CONTENT


When Is NSA Hacking OK?


"Even if cellphone customers have a vague awareness that their location affects the number of 'bars' on their phone ... they surely do not know which cellphone tower their call will be routed through, a fact even the government concedes," their dissent said.

Groups that filed briefs in support of the defendants included the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Maryland.

The court's ruling reportedly decreases the chances the Supreme Court would agree to take up the case, though ACLU attorney Nathan Freed Wessler says the opinion by the dissenting judges shows "the Fourth Circuit's decision is not the last word on this issue."

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/...ors_picks=true