Police Need Warrant for Cellphone Data, Federal Judge Rules
Cellphone location data that carriers store are protected by the Fourth Amendment, a federal district judge in the Western District of Pennsylvania affirmed this week. Judge Terrence McVerry upheld a magistrate’s decision that police need a warrant to access such information. The Electronic Frontier Foundation said the case seems to be the first in which a judge has confirmed that authorities need warrants to get a wireless carrier to turn over data on a cellphone’s location.
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Federal magistrates have been reaching similar conclusions nationwide, with prosecutors often reluctant to appeal for fear of setting precedent, a wireless industry official said Thursday. Carriers would welcome direction from the courts, since they often find themselves caught “between the dog and the fire hydrant,” trying to balance subscriber privacy and law enforcement demands, the official said.
The Justice Department had argued in the case police could rely on probable cause to access the records from Sprint Nextel. McVerry was asked to affirm the magistrate’s decision in a brief by EFF, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU Foundation of Pennsylvania and the Center for Democracy and Technology.
“Cellphone 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,” EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston said. “Until now, the government has routinely seized these records without search warrants. This landmark ruling is hopefully only the first of many.”