That’s rare. I actually find myself in agreement with the four liberals (and Roberts) who ruled that cell phone location data is protected by the 4th amendment. I wonder what the reasoning was for the conservative wing dissenting?
This is not a game changer as warrants are freely issued.
Further, can today's ruling be extended to protect all digital tracking information--your phone, your tablet, your car, electronic road passes, etc.?
Now add your computer, your phone, your vehicle, your aftermarket GPS, even your old TV or radio antennas to the mix to locate people, track their movement, to prove their collusion in drug deals, prostitution, politically motivated riots or membership in Antifata, etc.
This is why after working for the USG in certain fields I never use a phone without a battery that can be removed, and I keep an old vehicle without OnStar or GPS.
Big win!
I've always thought this was BS. But it was accepted in Smith vs. Maryland, which was cited as precedent here. The dissent there was that picking up the phone that Ma Bell gave you, therefore connecting to Ma Bell's network, so that when you called somebody else, Ma Bell would know that the number that Ma Bell gave you was making a call, so that Ma Bell could send you a bill from Ma Bell, was somehow "volunteering personal information" and not simply dialing the damn phone.
Incredible. Only 1 vote from saying law enforcement does NOT need a warrant to search your phone. While I’m appreciative of the ruling the vote count is troubling.
Does it really matter what the law is? We know law enforcement at the highest level scoffs at the law. So, if they wanna do it, they’ll just do it.
The four Liberal Justices would repudiate the “third-party doctrine”, while the four other Conservative Justices would apply it without exception. Chief Justice Roberts doesn’t want to keep the doctrine, but wants it to be limited. We don’t know how limited he wants it to be, just that today he felt the third-party doctrine went to far.
Now, about the fact that the government monitors email and “social media” postings, and scans license plates as we drive, and uses social security number as a citizen ID, and maintains a list of people who it won’t let fly without any justification or explanation. There are more.
Is it a “reasonable search” if the government plants a tracking device on your body without a warrant?
If you consider that having your butt “chipped” warrantlessly is “reasonable”, then you’ll love having your phone tracked just as identically.
I can’t believe I am about to write this... but the liberals are right and the conservative justices are wrong. In the modern world it is extremely difficult, for some near impossible, to function w/o the use of some technology which could leave you open to surveillance. This did not exist in the 18th century. Extending the protections of the 4th amendment to cover the realities of the modern world does not strike me as an abuse of judicial power.
I cannot believe that the Founding Fathers would have supported the ability of the state to spy on private citizens by such means sans a warrant.
Most importantly, how will this effect ‘She Who Shall Not Be Named’ and all of her data erasing and Blackberry smashing?
Once you put data out there, isn’t it part of the Endless Public Domain?
a cell phone is a two-way radio.
exactly what kind of ‘’privacy’’ do people expect?
the cell phone is constantly sending out its position
side issue. encryption.
does a cell phone company
guarantee you anything?
My understanding of the technology,plus a plain fact,tells me that that's wrong.It's my understanding that this technology only gives an approximate location for the phone,not an exact one.Also,just because someone's *phone* is in a particular place it doesn't mean that the *owner* was there as well.People do lend their phones to others and people do "borrow" another person's phone without his/her permission/knowledge.
Big deal.
They can get a FISA Warrant to spy on Political enemies, supposedly the most reviewed and deliberate type of Warrant because somebody accuses somebody else of hiring Prostitutes to Pee on a Bed in a Russian Hotel.
If that is justifiable, anything is.