By: Zack Zaldman Does the United States government need a warrant to search through your phone records to determine your location? That is the question up for debate in Carpenter v. United States, a potentially landmark case for which the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on November 29th, 2017.
Case Background: In 2011 police arrested four men with suspicion of multiple armed robberies. One of the men gave the FBI not only his cell phone number, but those of his co-conspirators accused of the crime as well (including Carpenter’s number). The FBI then used this info to extract “transactional records” from the phone numbers under a court order, but not a warrant from a judge. This record included date and time of calls on the phone in addition to the location of those phone calls. The FBI then indicted Timothy Carpenter with aiding and abetting robbery based on this location data. Issue: The issue at hand is whether the collection of Carpenter’s cellphone records is constitutional. Without a warrant for the records request, Carpenter and the ACLU argue that the Fourth Amendment protects against the warrantless search and seizure of location records, while the U.S. government argues that a court order granted under the Stored Communications Act is sufficient to obtain Carpenter’s records. Carpenter requested the cellphone location information be suppressed from the case because it was obtained unconstitutionally. The District Court denied the motion to suppress and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court’s decision, leading to an appeal heard by the Supreme Court. The justifications for obtaining cellphone records comes from the 1979 Supreme Court decision Smith v. Maryland, stating “a person has no legitimate expectations of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties”. Since all phone information goes through cell providers, this information is technically turned over to third parties as soon as a contract for cell service is signed. Whether this third party doctrine applies to the location from which calls are made however, remains up for debate. Result: If the Court rules in favor of Carpenter it would be a victory for right to privacy advocates and those concerned with the increasing trend of unrestricted digital surveillance. Early signs from the justices during oral arguments seemed to favor Carpenter. Nevertheless, the ultimate verdict remains to be seen and will be forthcoming sometime later this term. Works Cited https://www.oyez.org/cases/2017/16-402 http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/carpenter-v-united-states-2/ http://reason.com/blog/2017/11/29/today-at-scotus-warrantless-cell-phone-t#comment
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