Supreme Court: Police Need Warrant for Mobile Location Data
Summary: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Carpenter v. United States that the government generally needs a court-ordered warrant to obtain cell-site location information, rejecting the decades-old "third-party doctrine" that let investigators collect such records from carriers without one. The majority cited "seismic shifts in digital technology" and the "deeply revealing" nature of the data, while Justice Roberts called the ruling "a narrow one" limited to cell-site records.
Key Takeaway: The ruling does not touch the commercial side: AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon are terminating third-party location-data agreements after the Securus and LocationSmart scandals, but no federal law stops them from signing new ones, and the Fourth Amendment does not apply when the government is not involved.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
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