Supreme Court: Government Must Get Warrant For Smartphone Location Data

The Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that law enforcement will no longer be able to access troves of smartphone information about citizens, such as carriers' location data, without a warrant. The ruling is a major win for privacy activists, such as the ACLU and EFF, who have been fighting against law enforcement’s practice of obtaining smartphone data covering many months or years.

Carpenter v. United States

In the Carpenter v. United States case, the prosecutor suspected that Timothy Ivory Carpenter was involved in an armed robbery. Witnesses said that Carpenter had planned the robbery and was waiting in a stolen car across the street as the robbery happened. Afterwards, the prosecutor obtained 127 days of smartphone location data, as well as other records, from the wireless carriers, that showed that Carpenter was indeed in the area when the robbery happened. Following this information, Carpenter was convicted and sentenced to 116 years in prison.

Carpenter later accused the government of violating his constitutional rights, because the smartphone data they obtained over that four-month period also revealed when he had slept at home on certain nights or when he had attended church on Sunday mornings. Carpenter’s lawyers argued that he had an expectation of privacy, which the government violated by not obtaining a warrant from a judge before getting so much location data.

However, prior to this case reaching the Supreme Court, the Six Circuit Court ruled that Carpenter didn’t have an expectation of privacy because he voluntarily gave that information to the wireless carriers. Therefore, the court argued, the government could obtain his location data without a warrant.

The Six Circuit Court seems to have applied the “Third-Party Doctrine,” a legal theory that says that if you give your data to another party, then you can no longer expect that data to remain private.

Supreme Court Ruling

In the 5-4 vote, the majority of justices disagreed with the Six Circuit Court, primarily because the government had obtained large amounts of data about Carpenter’s whereabouts over an extended period of time. 

Chief Justice Roberts, who was part of the majority that wrote the ruling, said the following:

“Mapping a cell phone’s location over the course of 127 days provides an all-encompassing record of the holder’s whereabouts.

As with GPS information, the timestamped data provides an intimate window into a person’s life, revealing not only his particular movements, but through them his ‘familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations.”

The newly appointed justice Gorsuch was one of the dissenters, but not because he wanted law enforcement to get cell-site location data without a warrant. Instead, he argued that the majority’s ruling didn't go far enough.

In his opinion, the standard of having a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in a given context sets the bar too low for Americans’ constitutional rights. Furthermore, even if users offer data voluntarily to third-parties, Gorsuch argued that it doesn’t mean the government can just come and take that data without a warrant, as the Fourth Amendment would still apply.

An excerpt from his dissenting opinion notes:

“What’s left of the Fourth Amendment? Today we use the Internet to do most everything. Smartphones make it easy to keep a calendar, correspond with friends, make calls, conduct banking, and even watch the game. Countless Internet companies maintain records about us and, increasingly, for us.

Even our most private documents—those that, in other eras, we would have locked safely in a desk drawer or destroyed—now reside on third party servers. Smith and Miller teach that the police can review all of this material, on the theory that no one reasonably expects any of it will be kept private. But no one believes that, if they ever did.”

A brief filed by Apple, Google, and Facebook also warned the justices against defaulting their opinions to the Third-Party Doctrine

“No constitutional doctrine should presume that consumers assume the risk of warrantless government surveillance simply by using technologies that are beneficial and increasingly integrated into modern life.”

Big technology companies likely believe that if their users could trust that their data is safe on their servers and that the government doesn’t abuse its powers, then those users may be more willing to share that data with them. The Supreme Court ruling should restrict how much data the government can obtain from companies without a warrant, but it remains to be seen how well this will be applied in practice.

Lucian Armasu
Lucian Armasu is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He covers software news and the issues surrounding privacy and security.
  • stdragon
    That's a start. Now hopefully SCOTUS can rule that forcing having to give up the password or encryption key violates the 5th as well.
    Reply
  • hgchuong
    COMMONSENSE IN LAW PREVAILS IN LAW! THANK YOU!!
    Reply
  • Math Geek
    21080604 said:
    That's a start. Now hopefully SCOTUS can rule that forcing having to give up the password or encryption key violates the 5th as well.

    they already ruled you can't be forced to give up passwords/pin numbers. which is why the gov has been reduced to paying hackers to get into phones.

    however, they also ruled you COULD be forced to provide fingerprints/face scans and other biometric data to unlock devices!! so all them nice fancy fingerprint locks and face scans and so on can and will be used against you if needed. you will be FORCED to be scanned to unlock your device if that is how it is locked. something to keep in mind if you doing bad stuff and likely to draw the attention of the authorities.
    Reply
  • 10tacle
    Math is exactly correct. Law enforcement (in the US) must get a warrant for a telecom company to release privacy location tracking and call record info. The fact in this case that it was obtained without a warrant is really a failure of the telecom company as a first gate stop. All they had to say was "Not without a warrant." So whoever authorized that without a warrant, and whatever telecom company it was, they need to be included in said lawsuit.

    I spent 10 years in the telecom business and know first hand what it takes to hand over user data to law enforcement. Also keep in mind this data is used for tracking missing persons. So effectively NOTHING has changed. All SCOTUS did was restate the 4th Amendment that it takes a warrant. Waste of time for SCOTUS. And regarding the fingerprint/unlock issue, if they have a warrant, it's just like entering your home and searching all of its contents: you lost ALL your rights to privacy by the signature of a judge.
    Reply
  • 10tacle
    21080604 said:
    That's a start. Now hopefully SCOTUS can rule that forcing having to give up the password or encryption key violates the 5th as well.

    I think you mean the 4th there chief.
    Reply
  • shrapnel_indie
    21085090 said:
    Math is exactly correct. Law enforcement (in the US) must get a warrant for a telecom company to release privacy location tracking and call record info. The fact in this case that it was obtained without a warrant is really a failure of the telecom company as a first gate stop. All they had to say was "Not without a warrant." So whoever authorized that without a warrant, and whatever telecom company it was, they need to be included in said lawsuit.

    I spent 10 years in the telecom business and know first hand what it takes to hand over user data to law enforcement. Also keep in mind this data is used for tracking missing persons. So effectively NOTHING has changed. All SCOTUS did was restate the 4th Amendment that it takes a warrant. Waste of time for SCOTUS. And regarding the fingerprint/unlock issue, if they have a warrant, it's just like entering your home and searching all of its contents: you lost ALL your rights to privacy by the signature of a judge.

    Maybe it was a waste of time, but it seems our government needs reminding of the laws that are in place to keep it in check. I'm glad to see a SCOTUS that is actually willing to look at the laws within the Constitution and interpret them as they were meant to be, and not throw out some "was never envisioned" crap that meant to imply that the Constitutional law does not apply and give them, wrongfully, the right to ignore The Constitution and do what they want.
    Reply
  • Brian28
    10TACLE: No, he means the 5th, which protects you from self-incrimination. Being forced to testify that your password is xxx would violate the 5th amendment, even if they have a warrant to satisfy the 4th. Of course if they find your password written on the back of an envelope in your home, then you lose.
    Reply
  • Non-Euclidean
    Oh man... Time to round up and shred those old envelopes...
    Reply