Supreme Court Rules Warrants Required for Cellphone Location Data. The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday imposed limits on the ability of police to obtain cellphone data pinpointing the past location of criminal suspects in a victory for digital privacy advocates and a setback for law enforcement authorities. In the 5-4 ruling, the court said police generally need a court-approved warrant to get access to the data, setting a higher legal hurdle than previously existed under federal law. The court said obtaining such data without a warrant from wireless carriers, as police routinely do, amounts to an unreasonable search and seizure under the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment. In the ruling written by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, the court decided in favor of Timothy Carpenter, who was convicted in several armed robberies at Radio Shack and T-Mobile stores in Ohio and Michigan with the help of past cellphone location data that linked him to the crime scenes. Roberts was joined by the court's four liberal justices in the majority. The court's other four conservatives dissented. "We decline to grant the state unrestricted access to a wireless carrier's database of physical location information," Roberts said. He added that the ruling still allows the police to avoid obtaining warrants for other types of business records. Roberts said the ruling did not address other emerging digital privacy fights, including whether police need warrants to access real-time location information.
https://valliantnews.com/2019/11/04/...location-data/
I am disappointed in the conservative justices.