Supreme Court barely rules 5-4 that Police need Warrant for Cellphone Location Data

phew that was close



https://www.npr.org/2018/06/22/6050...rant-to-get-location-information-from-cell-to



In the case, police got location data without a warrant from the provider under the 1986 "Stored Communication Data" act now commonly used for text messages, but enacted well-before location data was a thing.

It was such a contentious argument, that each dissenter wrote their own opinion, which is rarely done.

The four dissenters were led by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was joined by the court's three most conservative members, justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch. In a rare move, they each filed separate dissents.​

Here's a link to the "Opinion of the Court", with the four dissenting opinions:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf

Spoiler: my opinion?

In Germany, this doesn't even make it to Supreme Court, and the CEO of the provider would have been arrested, under their privacy laws. I much prefer Germany's privacy laws.

 

I can't remember, either. I kinda remember The Wire always making a big deal about the warrant process as part of the drama.

Here's what the police in this case used (maybe The Wire did, too), an act dating back to 1986 wrt internet providers (ISPs). I'm shocked they enacted it waaay back then, but it was treated as business-type data that police could ask for without warrants

The Stored Communications Act (SCA, codified at 18 U.S.C. Chapter 121 §§ 2701–2712) is a law that addresses voluntary and compelled disclosure of "stored wire and electronic communications and transactional records" held by third-party internet service providers (ISPs). It was enacted as Title II of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA).

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the people's right "to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures". However, when applied to information stored online, the Fourth Amendment's protections are potentially far weaker. In part, this is because the Fourth Amendment defines the "right to be secure" in spatial terms that do not directly apply to the "reasonable expectation of privacy" in an online context. The Fourth Amendment protects "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures."[1] The Fourth Amendment has been stressed as a right that protects people and not places, which leaves the interpretation of the amendment's language broad in scope. In addition, society has not reached clear consensus over expectations of privacy in terms of more modern (and developing, future) forms of recorded and/or transmitted information.

​

Supreme Court ruled GPS/location data is new and different than the data of the above act, and they wrapped the 4th Amendment around tracking our locations, without a warrant.

 

This brings up another question:

Anyone else asking why is location data even stored? Maybe I'm reading the case wrong, but my understanding was they didn't dynamically track the perps in real-time, that the phone company provided historical tracking info? Why do they even have that? And how long do they keep it?

grrrrr

 

I largely agree with your point, but I was talking about actual GPS tracking data, not internet data or where your credit card is being used.

Again, maybe I'm misreading the case, and this is triangularization of cell-tower data, that maybe we could say that there are business reasons to allow (even need) persistence.

But as for pure GPS location info, not the same. I hope they aren't storing that. Because that's just wildly wrong.

 

doesn't imply GPS data. That description is the same as cell-tower data stored by user and time...then given to police to run triangularization algorithms on.

I 100% agree with the Supreme Court that, regardless, anyway to track location is wrapped in the 4th Amendment wrt warrants,,,I'm just extending my concern that real GPS data is stored. Maybe the phone companies can convince me that storing cell-tower data that phones are connected to has a business need (like for pricing / roaming charges), but even that should expire rather quickly and be purged.

Certainly GPS data has no business need over Privacy concerns.

 

Let me explain what the data is, so we as citizens can decide if there is a business reason to persist it.

As @Invisible Fan said, Metadata is mumbo-jumbo. Let me tell you what it likely is in this case. In compsci/data science lingo, we only use the term "Referential metadata" to refer to mapping tables. (And no, I don't mean geographical maps, but rather the computer science term "data mapping.") Mapping tables are for joining actual data together, but they hold no data. Mapping tables are useless without the data tables they join.

So, when NSA says "referential metadata" as opposed to communication data, they still mean actual info about a users, just not the conversation.

It's likely cell tower data stored by phone# or Mac-address, at time intervals, to track the user to a cell-tower, which would be required for later calculating roaming charges (as a reasonable example). To make the phone work, the tower "sees" the phone/user anyhow. So they just save the user info by tower at intervals.

not Metadata as I ever use the term (as a computer scientist)...but real information data -- Tower Info/location, User Info, Time -- From that, Police can triangularize a person/owner of phone.