Cato: The Fourth Amendment Protects Your Cell-Location Data

When the federal district court in D.C. ordered a seizure of Alonzo Marlow’s cell service location information (CSLI) held by his cell provider, it held that the federal government didn’t need a warrant to obtain CSLI data from a person’s phone provider. The Stored Communications Act of 1986 (SCA) governs the searching of such data, and under § 2703(d) of that act, federal investigators need not demonstrate probable cause in order to search—but merely to show “specific and articulable facts” that there is criminal wrongdoing. Thus, the Fourth Amendment requirement that “no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause” is effectively removed.

Cato has filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, supporting the appeal of Marlow and his co-defendants. For purposes of the Fourth Amendment, cell phone data is a “paper” or “effect” in which there is a right of the people to be secure. The Supreme Court made clear in Riley v. California (2014) that giving police carte blanche to search a phone incident to an arrest would “in effect give police officers unbridled discretion to rummage at will among a person’s private effects.”

Read more at https://www.cato.org/blog/fourth-amendment-protects-cell-location-data