Supreme Court rules that police need warrants to get phone location infoThe decision was ruled in favor with a 5-4 vote.
The United States Supreme Court issued a ruling on June 22 stating that police must first get an official warrant before they can use cell tower data to track someone's location.
This ruling comes from the Carpenter v. United States case that dates back six years to 2011. Timothy Carpenter was arrested for a robbery in Detroit during that year, but only after police tracked down 12,898 locations of Carpenter over the course of 127 days. However, the police obtained all this data without any sort of warrant.
With the June 22 decision from the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts says:
Given the unique nature of cell phone location records, the fact that the information is held by a third party does not by itself overcome the user's claim to Fourth Amendment protection.
Furthermore, as noted by Democratic Senator Ron Wyden:
The court's recognition that digital devices can generate 'near-perfect surveillance' of a person...
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Supreme Court rules that police need warrants to get phone location info
