The D.C. Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday that it is unconstitutional for law enforcement to use certain technologies that allow the tracking of a suspect’s cellular phone without a warrant.
The ruling reversed a decision of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia that allowed police to use a particular tracking tool, the cell-site simulator, calling it a violation of Fourth Amendment privacy protections as they relate to policing tactics.
Investigators have used cell-site simulators to act as fake cell towers to connect to devices they are searching instead of the device’s regular network.
Washington D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department employed that tactic in charging robbery and sexual assault suspect Prince Jones in 2013. Thursday’s ruling overturned that conviction.
“To locate a person through his or her cellphone invades the person’s actual, legitimate and reasonable expectation of privacy in his or her location information and is a search,” the ruling states.
The ruling called the government’s argument “unpersuasive.”
“We thus conclude that under ordinary circumstances, the use of a cell-site simulator to locate a person through his or her cellphone invades the person’s actual, legitimate and reasonable expectation of privacy in his or her location information and is a search,” the ruling went on to say.
Thursday’s decision could have broad implications for local and federal law enforcement agencies that have already invested heavily in using cell-site simulators. According to a December 2016 House Oversight and Government Reform Committee report, nearly $95 million of taxpayer funds have been used on 434 cell-site simulator devices between 2010 and 2014. A single cell-site simulator is estimated to cost upwards of $500,000.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder issued a policy directive in 2015 that federal agencies could only use cell-site simulators with a warrant but the policy was never officially codified into law.
