The D.C. nightclub owner at the center of a landmark Supreme Court case about GPS tracking is now also challenging prosecutors’ extensive use of data from cell phone towers to monitor his location.
The Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that police violated Antoine Jones’ Fourth Amendment rights when they placed a GPS device on his Jeep and tracked the vehicle for a month without a valid warrant.
The case was sent back to the District’s federal court, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C. is seeking to retry Jones, who was convicted on cocaine distribution charges in 2008 and sentenced to life in prison.
Court filings show that prosecutors tracked Jones’ location using data from his cell phone for about four months in 2005. The government got judicial approval for the records, but the order required a lower burden of proof than the probable cause required for search warrants.
Defense attorney A. Eduardo Balarezo is now arguing that the cell phone data, too, was obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment because the prolonged monitoring violates Jones’ expectation of privacy.
“People have an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in the totality of their movements over an extended period because an individual’s privacy interests in the totality of his movements far exceeds any privacy interest in a single public trip from one place to another,” Balarezo wrote in a motion to suppress the cell tower data.
The government, Balarezo wrote, “seeks to do with cell site data what it cannot do with the suppressed GPS data.”
The Supreme Court ruled narrowly in Jones’ case, holding that the GPS put on his vehicle was unconstitutional because law enforcement planted the device on his property. The court’s opinion didn’t address whether police can use data from a GPS device already installed in a vehicle without a warrant, which would be similar to using cell phone data to track movements, experts say.
A federal judge in New York made waves in legal and technology circles last year when he denied an application for cell tower data, ruling that such orders require search warrants based on probable cause.
In Jones’ case, prosecutors’ application for the cell information “utterly failed” to give any specific reasons why the data should be disclosed, Balarezo wrote.
In a separate motion, Balarezo argues that all evidence derived from the GPS on Jones’ vehicle — which led investigators to a stash house, cash, cocaine and witnesses — should also be suppressed.
