Police Require Court Order to Access Mobile Phone Location Records
A US federal court has rued that cell phone location information stored by a mobile phone provider is protected by the Fourth Amendment and that the government must obtain a warrant based on probable cause before seizing such records.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) had asked the federal court in the Western District of Pennsylvania to overturn a magistrate judge's decision requiring the government to obtain a warrant for stored location data, arguing that the government could obtain such information without probable cause. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), at the invitation of the court, filed a friend-of-the-court brief opposing the government's appeal and arguing that the magistrate was correct to require a warrant.
Last week, the court agreed with EFF and issued an order affirming the magistrate's decision.
EFF has successfully argued before other courts that the government needs a warrant before it can track a cell phone's location in real-time. However, this is the first known case where a court has found that the government must also obtain a warrant when obtaining archived data about a mobile phone's location from the mobile phone provider.
"Cell phone providers store an increasing amount of sensitive data about where you are and when, based on which cell towers your phone uses when making a call. Until now, the government has routinely seized these records without search warrants," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "This landmark ruling is hopefully only the first of many. Just as magistrates across the country have begun denying government requests to track cell phones in real-time without warrants, based on arguments first made by EFF, so too do we hope this decision will spark new scrutiny of the government's unconstitutional seizure of stored cell phone location records."
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU Foundation of Pennsylvania, and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) joined EFF's brief.
Posted to the site on 14th September 2008
