Florida Supreme Court requires warrant for cell tower phone data

Florida Supreme Court requires warrant for cell tower phone data

Police have been using the metadata gleaned from cellphone tower interactions for years. And they have done it without a warrant. This issue, whether cellphone location data obtained from the telecoms requires a warrant had fallen through the cracks of Fourth Amendment law.

Because it wasn’t an old fashioned phone tap, law enforcement attempted to treat it as if it was not a “search” and therefore outside the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.

A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision ruled that a GPS tracker attached by law enforcement to a vehicle was a search, but did not reach the issue of whether it was a search that required a warrant. 

In a case from the Supreme Court of Florida last month, the Court ruled that use of location information obtained from cell towers of the telecom was a search for Fourth Amendment purposes and the police need a warrant to use that information to track a suspect, who in this case was an alleged drug dealer.

Phone taps require a warrant based on probable cause because they disclose the content of a private communication. But phone numbers and location data are necessarily disclosed to your telephone company when you dial a phone number and when you move about with a cellphone, as the phone automatically switches between cell towers.

Because this information is voluntarily disclosed to a third-party, the telecom company, the U.S. Supreme Court held in a 35 year old case, that you had no reasonable expectation of privacy in that data, and permitted pen register or a “trap and trace,” which only record the incoming and outgoing phone numbers, to be used without a warrant.

Wired.com, “Cops Need a Warrant to Grab Your Cell Tower Data, Florida Court Rules,” Kim Zetter, October 17, 2104

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