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The Supreme Court has accepted a challenge to the warrantless collection of historical cellphone location data in a case that could curtail U.S. government surveillance and expand American privacy rights.
The case, Carpenter v. U.S., was granted certiorari Monday on appeal from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, which found that police did not need a warrant based on probable cause to collect 127 days of cellphone records from MetroPCS and Sprint.
Timothy Carpenter was found guilty of participating in six Michigan robberies after the government said those cellphone records – which included calls made and geographic location – placed him near four of the crime scenes. He is serving a 116-year prison sentence.
Federal courts have provided mixed rulings on whether the Fourth Amendment requires police to get a warrant. Authorities say a warrant is not necessary in Carpenter's case, as the Supreme Court’s 1979 ruling in Smith v. Maryland holds that people have no expectation of privacy over information voluntarily given to companies.
The so-called third party doctrine of Smith v. Maryland, which dealt with a short span of landline records, and related cases also applies to some banking and internet records. It has been used to justify mass surveillance by the federal government, including the National Security Agency’s now-curbed dragnet of U.S. call records.
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