(Image: file photo)
The Supreme Court has said that law enforcement must first seek a warrant before obtaining historical cell phone location records from phone companies, upending a near-decade long practice by police.
The court ruled 5-4 on the case[1], in what became one of the most awaited privacy legal decisions in the US this year.
Read also: Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile stop sharing real-time cell phone location data[2]
The so-called "Carpenter" case had centered on the eponymous Timothy Carpenter, a criminal who was caught thanks to cell phone records in 2011. Law enforcement had obtained his location data from a phone provider without a search warrant, arguing the provider already had his data and Carpenter had no "reasonable expectation of privacy."
But the court found the government's warrantless access to cell-site records over a period of time "contravenes that expectation" of privacy, said Roberts.
"The fact that such information is gathered by a third party does not make it any less deserving of Fourth Amendment protection," said Chief Justice John Roberts, who delivered the decision.
"Because location information is continually logged for all of the 400 million devices in the United States -- not just those belonging to persons who might happen to come under investigation -- this newfound tracking capacity runs against everyone," said Roberts.
"Only the few without cell phones could escape this tireless and absolute surveillance," he added.
The court stressed that the decision does not consider real-time tracking, or so-called "tower dumps,"[3] which police use to obtain information on all of the devices connected to a cell tower at during a particular period of time.
Roberts added that the government's argument "fails to contend