The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that acquiring location records from a cell phone carrier without a warrant is unconstitutional, further upholding the validity of the Fourth Amendment in light of the digital age.
The landmark case, U.S. v. Davis, concerned the ability of law enforcement to access past location information from cell phone data. Quartavious Davis was one of four suspects in an armed robbery investigation and was sentenced to 162 years in jail upon conviction. His cell phone carrier had over 11,000 locations stored over the span of 67 days that helped place him at the scene of the crime. Davis’ cell phone records were acquired by investigators by way of a court order, which has been common practice up to this point.
Obtaining a search warrant to access location data was formerly unnecessary under the interpretation of the “third party doctrine.” This legal theory operates on the premise that a consumer can’t expect privacy of information that he or she voluntarily shares with a third party — in this case, the cell phone carrier.
“In short, we hold that cell site location information is within the subscriber’s reasonable expectation of privacy,” the three-judge panel wrote in its decision. “The obtaining of that data without a warrant is a Fourth Amendment violation.”
The decision is currently binding in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama, but the ACLU believes that it will be used by courts around the country that are looking at similar privacy issues.
As for Davis, the court still had enough evidence to uphold his sentence.
