Quote:Christmas came on Friday, June 22 this year—that is, if you’re a privacy and surveillance law nerd.

After deliberating the decision for months, the Supreme Court handed down its opinion in Carpenter v. United States, a case in which the court was asked to answer the question: is it OK for police to obtain 127-days worth of someone’s cell-site location information (CSLI) without a warrant?

In a 5-4 decision, the court found that the answer was “no.” This is clearly a landmark step toward stronger privacy protections, and the opinion builds on two other related cases that the court unanimously decided in 2012 (Jones v. United States) and 2014 (Riley v. California).

A majority of the justices clearly articulated something that many of us intuit: that “tracking a person’s past movements... are detailed, encyclopedic, and effortlessly compiled.” In other words, long-term location data is “unique” when compared against other types of record that police have been previously able to obtain, such as bank records or short-term call logs.

After all, allowing law enforcement officers a warrantless tool of this magnitude gives them something of a superpower. Until Friday, police could easily acquire a set of data that would achieve what no team of officers previously could without expending significant human and financial resources.

With the court clearly imposing a warrant standard, police just have to do a little more legwork ahead of time, but getting a warrant is not difficult. Federal magistrate judges nationwide sign off on them literally every day: it is one of their key functions. The police’s job just got a bit tougher but certainly not anywhere close to impossible.

Now, while the Supreme Court plays a critical role in helping all of us (police and civilians alike) understand what the law is, it is equally important to remember that privacy advocates big and small cannot afford to wait.

Quote: is it OK for police to obtain 127-days worth of someone’s cell-site location information (CSLI) without a warrant?

(06-28-2018 01:48 PM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  

Quote: is it OK for police to obtain 127-days worth of someone’s cell-site location information (CSLI) without a warrant?

How is something like this allowed to get to the Supreme Court? The answer is clearly "no" and should have been made clear, with prejudice, at whatever low level court first saw this outrageous argument.