Warrantless mobile phone location tracking heads to Supreme Court

The US Supreme Court is being asked to resolve once and for all whether the authorities need a court warrant under the Fourth Amendment to obtain a suspect's cell-site location data records. The case the justices were asked to review July 31 concerns a Florida man who got a life term for several robberies in a 2012 case built with his mobile phone's location data the police obtained without a warrant. The case has big privacy implications for anybody who carries a mobile phone.

According to the government, that device may be tracked at will without the Fourth Amendment's probable cause standard being met. What's more, the petition to the high court from defendant Quartavious Davis comes as cell-site tracking has become a choice surveillance tool in the aftermath of a Supreme Court ruling that said the authorities needed a warrant to affix GPS trackers to vehicles. In that 2012 decision, the high court declared that the government's act of affixing a GPS device on a vehicle was the equivalent of a search usually requiring a warrant. The American Civil Liberties Union is representing Davis and wants the high court to overturn a March decision from the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled against Davis based on precedent from the analog age. Given that no federal appeals court has sided with the Fourth Amendment on the issue, there's a slim likelihood the Supreme Court would intervene at this juncture. However, a California federal judge ruled that warrants were required for such data. If that is upheld on appeal, that could create the appellate court split that would make the issue ripe for the Supreme Court.