Don't forget that 5G will soon offer much more accurate positioning data much closer to GPS.
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Supreme Court Rules Police Need Warrants to Obtain a User's Smartphone Location Data
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Anyone using a cell phone or smart phone just has to assume that everywhere they go and everything they say and read is being sent to the FBI or whatever. Because if you get on the wrong side of the law, that's exactly what it amounts to. These gadgets are fun and covenient, but without question—Spying devices. Anyone having concerns about getting busted for doing something illegal is a fool to be using these devices. Smartphones are for law abiding citizens only.
I’m shocked it was 5-4. Of course they need a warrant. It’s common sense. If a company is collecting private information on you the government is not entitled to ask for it without probable cause as decided by an impartial judge. Thank God John Roberts saw the light of day on this one or it would’ve been 5-4 the other way.
Get a warrant. If you’ve got any kind of probably cause no sane judge is going to deny it but police can’t go on a fishing expedition if they’re clueless as to who the suspect(s) might actually be.
Get a warrant. If you’ve got any kind of probably cause no sane judge is going to deny it but police can’t go on a fishing expedition if they’re clueless as to who the suspect(s) might actually be.
According to Kennedy's dissent, "As the number of cell sites has proliferated, the geographic area covered by each cell sector has shrunk, particularly in urban areas. In addition, with new technology measuring the time and angle of signals hitting their towers, wireless carriers already have the capability to pinpoint a phone’s location within 50 meters.”
That seems pretty accurate to me.
Apple doesn't track and store your location, but if you mean frequent places you can already delete that info in settings. But that's not relevant here because the court ruling was regarding the user of telephone company data to track location, not the location data on your phone or on Apple's servers.
While I agree with you, I'm going to play Devil's advocate here just to point out what the true problem is.
The problem here is that with the apps that you use and data that you collect on your phone, who truly owns the data? If you upload something to Facebook or to Dropbox that could potentially incriminate you, that 3rd party could be, in the eyes of the law, the owner of that data. Since they aren't directly implicated in the investigation or charges, no warrant would be needed to search them. All that the government would need to do is get a subpoena, and that 3rd party would hand over that data.
To make it worse, it isn't just the government that can do that. Any clerk of the court can do that. That means any lawyer or attorney can do this. And making it worse, they can write up that subpoena and get it authorized themselves for it to happen. Absolutely no warrant is needed or required to search a person or entity that is 3rd party to an investigation.
That is the problem, and that is why they truly need a warrant. Again, all explained in the link to the thread I posted earlier.
BL.
They are not making law. They are enforcing the fourth amendment of the Constitution, which is their job. If one judge does not believe in the Constitution, it says more about the judge than the rest of the Court.
Apple can delete any location data that may be on the phone, but the cellphone carriers have records of which cellphone towers you were connected to and when. Given that the phone is (nearly) always in contact with towers (if you have "bars", at least one tower has an idea how far away you are), and frequently in contact with multiple towers, they can usually triangulate to get your position reasonably closely. Apple can't have much control over this, it's the nature of cellphone networks. 5G will only make this more acute, as the "towers" will be smaller and closer together, giving a more clear picture of everyone's location.
If you read that actual decision, you'll see that's not the case. The most robust defense of the 4th Amendment comes from Gorsuch's dissent. Event Thomas's dissent (though his opinion is that a warrant is not required because it is not Carpenter's property being searched) offers a fuller defense of the 4th Amendment than the concurring opinion, which says a warrant is only required in narrow circumstances.
NYT rushed out a quick article after the decision was released, because of course people want to know the final score first, the reasoning later. Now we do have the time to read and analyze the decision, and doing so shows that liberals take a broad interpretation of the 4th amendment is simply incorrect.
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I'm going to sound like a broken record here, but read the actual decision, and I think your shock will go away.
Part of the whole plan of having independent judiciary, legislative and executive branches is to keep extremism in any branch under control.
Shock of shocks, Thomas sided with the corporations' rights over individual rights.
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I think we're officially at the point where we can throw discussions about what the legislative branch's role is out the freaking window.
Instead of listening to newspapers, who all have their own agenda, you can read the decisions directly. The decision is the Carpenter one.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/slipopinion/17
This is only going to get worse. At some point your location will be tracked by your car as well. What's the line between business records and what essentially is the non-medical equivalent of PHI?
I suspect that the court could say that records irrelevant to a business are PHI and is subject to a warrant. But again, that means that someone has to determine what is a relevant business record, something discussed in the dissent.
In cases like this Roberts always will rule against expansive police powers. I think for the US that's OK. Another question would be: if the government buys that information from a third-party would they need a warrant?
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/slipopinion/17
This is only going to get worse. At some point your location will be tracked by your car as well. What's the line between business records and what essentially is the non-medical equivalent of PHI?
I suspect that the court could say that records irrelevant to a business are PHI and is subject to a warrant. But again, that means that someone has to determine what is a relevant business record, something discussed in the dissent.
In cases like this Roberts always will rule against expansive police powers. I think for the US that's OK. Another question would be: if the government buys that information from a third-party would they need a warrant?
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I sure hope it never comes to that because the future of my country is in better shape when it's directed by 535 elected representatives than when it's in the hands of nine people appointed for life.
Separately... I heard a fantastic talk by someone who touched on the inefficiencies of government. He said be very thankful that it's slow and inefficient as we don't want it "run like a business". Places like N. Korea are run like a business as decisions are made quickly and decisively.
Lastly, the USA is a republic, not a democracy. This speaker said a "true democracy is five lions and three gazelles sitting around a table and voting on what's for lunch".
Remember, this is not about wire tapping, or listening to phone calls or reading e-mails or test messages, which are already protected. This is about simple location. Something that is integral to how a cellphone works. It is done continuously. Now, the police are investigating a case. They have all the warrants, Miranda warnings, etc., done properly. They have interviewed a dozen people. They know all their cellphone numbers. I like the idea that they could ask for the location of all those cell phones at the time of the, say, murder only with a warrant. But say they have just solved it. It’s Joe Blow. How about quickly checking for where his cell phone is? Pick him up quickly. There better be a judge available now. He might be heading to the airport. Or to the house of the next on his list. Oh, I'm a liberal, but this is a case of adapting the law to a new technology. We adapted to phone tapping, but it took us a while. I’m not sure about this one. Cops have reverse phone directories, so they can quickly see, from a jotted-down phone number in the victims wallet, who it was and where they live. Invasion of privacy? I don’t think so. Warrant? Why? The phone company can tall you the same tubing. “What kind of car does he drive?” A black Ford. Where does he live? Over on Penman. No warrant. Once you know his number, if it’s in use, you know where he is.
In this case, I have to agree this was the correct decision, whether or not it's a "liberal" decision.
Because -- with the exception for John Roberts -- the court's "liberal" justices all concurred in the 5-4 decision.
I agree and thought the same thing.
In the very opening paragraphs of the decision, they address this, and they say you're wrong.
What are you smoking?
This is something any person be it on the right or left of the political spectrum supports.
My extremely conservative Texan Christian wife is all for this. As I imagine so are most liberals. Not every issue is polarised. In fact if you stop swallowing party dogma and apply logic and common sense you would find most sides have a lot in common, they perhaps just see things being implemented in a different way.
No sane person wants the government to be allowed to invade their privacy without due cause, no one.
I disagree with your proposition that this was a liberal decision. As a fairly conservative guy, I believe that the decision represented a clear victory for the 4th amendment. I do not think that the supreme court can or should make decisions that conflict with the constitution. If you don't like what the constitution says, there is a process to amend it.
IMHO, the 4th amendment is black and white clear in this case:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
My phone is one of my "effects" that is constitutionally protected. The data within my phone (or that is generated by use of my phone) is also protected as it is an integral part of my effect (my phone).
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You could say that the conservative Justices take a broad interpretation to the 2nd Amendment, so it varies depending on the Justice and the Amendment in question.
It's true that the dissent did outline a narrow view of the 4th Amendment, but that doesn't invalidate the concurring opinion. As was mentioned in the opinion, times have changed, and the ease of eavesdropping on someone's location over not just minutes or hours, but over weeks constitutes a violation of one's privacy that simply was not doable decades ago either through technology itself or by the average law enforcement personnel.
I'm fairly conservative myself, and I am pleased with this decision. The conservative side of the court took a little too narrow of a view on the 4th, in my opinion.
As I understand what has happened here, they have left the door open to getting the information without a warrant if there are exigent circumstances like you described.
And as a fairly liberal guy, I applaud this decision as well, as the government was trying to get around this using a very nasty and dirty loophole in our laws. They were basically saying that "since the data is on someone else's property and not yours, we don't need a warrant to search them for your data, since they only hold the data, and we are investigating YOU."
That's wrong. They were associating your data to be belonging to someone else since it isn't stored on something you directly own (meaning, the servers containing that data). If data is stored locally on your phone, they should always have had a warrant to access that, no matter the probable cause or urgency needed because of that cause. The 4th Amendment is very clear on that.
What completely confounds me here is that some conservatives here are calling this a "liberal decision", when all conservatives should be praising this, as it keeps the government out of their lives and limits government altogether: a conservative principle that seems to be lost nowadays.
BL.