US court says no warrant needed for cellphone location data

Police do not need a warrant to obtain a person's cellphone location data held by wireless carriers, a US appeals court ruled May 31, dealing a setback to privacy advocates. The full 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond (VA) voted 12-3 that the government can get the information under a decades-old legal theory that it had already been disclosed to a third party, in this case a telephone company. The ruling overturns a divided 2015 opinion from the court's three-judge panel and reduces the likelihood that the Supreme Court would consider the issue.

Writing for the majority, Judge Diana Motz said obtaining cell-site information did not violate the protection against unreasonable searches found in the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution because cellphone users are generally aware that they are voluntarily sharing such data with their provider. "Anyone who has stepped outside to 'get a signal,' or has warned a caller of a potential loss of service before entering an elevator, understands, on some level, that location matters," Judge Motz wrote.