Current Events > Awesome Supreme Court ruling on June 22 2018 (searches).

(+) Yeah! (+)

The United States Supreme Court ruled on June 22 2018 in Carpenter v. United States that law enforcement must have a warrant to use a cell phones GPS tracking system.

You probably thought that they needed it anyway. Well, there was a work around called the Third Party Disclosure Doctrine that allowed third parties to voluntarily give information to police without a warrant.

So, for example, law enforcement wanted to track where John has been the past 130 days. Law Enforcement could go to Verizon and simply ask for this information, and Verizon could voluntarily give this information to law enforcement. And this did not violate the Fourth Amendment.

The new ruling in Carpenter v. United States held that insofar as cell phone GPS tracking is concerned, law enforcement must secure a warrant to use this type of tracking.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf
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The vote split is a bit odd, Roberts (not Kennedy) voted with the liberal wing of the court.
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Good shit.
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bover_87 posted...

The vote split is a bit odd, Roberts (not Kennedy) voted with the liberal wing of the court.

I havent read the full case yet. My assumption is that t goes against precedent. Historically the third party disclure doctrine allowed this. The milestone case is a company that gave information over to law enforcement just because they asked for it.

The court held when someone disclosed information they are doing it at their own risk that they trust the third party not to disclose it to anyone else.

If the court ruled with the dissenters it would have been following that precedent.

I havent read the case yet, but my assumption is the majority reasoned that in todays society that is just too much power for government to have without securing a warrant.
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Gorsuch, Alito and Kennedy dissented

BWLurker2 posted...

Gorsuch, Alito and Kennedy dissented

So did Thomas, but who cares about that zero.

Nomadic View posted...

bover_87 posted...

The vote split is a bit odd, Roberts (not Kennedy) voted with the liberal wing of the court.

I havent read the full case yet. My assumption is that t goes against precedent. Historically the third party disclure doctrine allowed this. The milestone case is a company that gave information over to law enforcement just because they asked for it.

The court held when someone disclosed information they are doing it at their own risk that they trust the third party not to disclose it to anyone else.

If the court ruled with the dissenters it would have been following that precedent.

I havent read the case yet, but my assumption is the majority reasoned that in todays society that is just too much power for government to have without securing a warrant.

Basically, the ruling is that the third party doctrine doesn't apply here because cellular location data is considered to be much more private, and thus much more affected by the Fourth Amendment than, say, tax ledgers or contracts with a company.
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