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Federal Court of Appeals: Warrantless Cell Phone Tracking OK

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Photo Credit: Wang Zhao/Agence France-Presse – Getty Images
In a significant victory for law enforcement, a federal appeals court on Tuesday said that government authorities could extract historical location data directly from telecommunications carriers without a search warrant.

The closely watched case, in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, is the first ruling that squarely addresses the constitutionality of warrantless searches of historical location data stored by cellphone service providers. Ruling 2 to 1, the court said a warrantless search was “not per se unconstitutional” because location data was “clearly a business record” and therefore not protected by the Fourth Amendment.

The ruling is likely to intensify legislative efforts, already bubbling in Congress and in the states, to consider measures to require warrants based on probable cause to obtain cellphone location data.

The appeals court ruling sharply contrasts with a New Jersey State Supreme Court opinion in mid-July that said the police required a warrant to track a suspect’s whereabouts in real time. That decision relied on the New Jersey Constitution, whereas the ruling Tuesday in the Fifth Circuit was made on the basis of the federal Constitution.

The Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on whether cellphone location data is protected by the Constitution. The case, which was initially brought in Texas, is not expected to go to the Supreme Court because it is “ex parte,” or filed by only one party — in this case, the government.

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Court Says Tracking by Cell Phone Signal Off Limits

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Photo Credit: WNDAmid revelations that the National Security Agency and others have monitored Americans’ cell phone calls, a state court has affirmed the privacy rights of cell phone users.

The decision this week by the New Jersey Supreme Court in the case of Thomas W. Earls applies only to residents of the state, but it is being watched as a possible bellwether in the surging dispute over the government’s surveillance powers.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center said the decision is the first to “establish a constitutional right in location data since the U.S. Supreme Court decided United States v. Jones, a GPS tracking case in which several justices expressed concern about the collection of location data.”

In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled police could not attach a tracking device to a suspect’s vehicle and follow him without probable cause and a warrant.

In the Earls case, the court upheld that “individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their cell phone location data.”

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Paul Wants to Lead Supreme Court Challenge to Fed’s Tracking of Americans’ Calls, Emails (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Sen. Rand Paul said Sunday he wants to mount a Supreme Court challenge to the federal government logging Americans’ phone calls and Internet activities.

Paul, R-Ky., a leading voice in the Libertarian movement, told “Fox News Sunday” he wants to get enough signatures to file a class-action lawsuit before the high court and will appeal to younger Americans, who appear to be advancing the cause of less government and civil liberties.

“I’m going to be asking all the Internet providers and all of the phone companies: Ask your customers to join me in a class-action lawsuit,” he said. “If we get 10 million Americans saying we don’t want our phone records looked at, then maybe someone will wake up and something will change in Washington.”

Paul, a first-term senator and potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate, said he disagrees with President Obama’s argument that the National Security Agency collecting 3 billion calls daily and other information is a modest invasion of privacy.

“That doesn’t look like a modest invasion of privacy,” he told Fox. “I have no problem if you have probable cause … but we’re talking about trolling through a billion phone records a day.”

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Feds Admit that FBI Warrantless Cellphone Tracking, Eavesdropping ‘Very Common’

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Photo Credit: Free Patriot

FBI investigators for at least five years have routinely used a sophisticated cellphone tracking tool that can pinpoint callers’ locations and listen to their conversations — all without getting a warrant for it, a federal court was told this week.

The use of the “Stingray,” as the tool is called, “is a very common practice” by federal investigators, Justice Department attorneys told the U.S. District Court for Arizona Thursday, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Installed in an unmarked van, Stingray mimics a cellphone tower, so it can pinpoint the precise location of any mobile device in range and intercept conversations and data, said Linda Lye, staff attorney at the ACLU of Northern California in a blog post about the case.

In a rare public discussion of federal electronic surveillance capabilities and authorities, Justice Department lawyers told the court hearing that, instead of a warrant, the FBI operates Stingray and other cellphone-mimicking technology under the authority of “pen register” orders. These court orders, also known as “tap and trace” orders, are generally issued to allow investigators to collect only so-called “metadata” — like all phone numbers calling to or called from a particular number.

But Stingray collects much more than just phone numbers and also “sweep[s] up the data of innocent people who happen to be nearby,” according to the ACLU filing.

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Federal Appellate Court: No warrant needed to track you in real time by your cell phone

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Photo credit: from_ko

A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that police do not need a warrant to track the location of a suspect’s phone.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that the Drug Enforcement Administration did not violate the constitutional rights of Melvin Skinner when they collected his phone’s GPS data.

DEA agents tracked Skinner’s pay-as-you-go phone as he transported drugs between Arizona and Tennessee. They arrested him at a rest stop in Texas with a motorhome filled with more than 1,100 pounds of marijuana.

Skinner’s lawyers argued that the police violated his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches by collecting his phone’s GPS data without first obtaining a warrant.

But the appeals court ruled that Skinner has no reasonable expectation of privacy for his cellphone’s location data.

Read more from this story HERE.