
Supreme Court says government needed warrant to search cellphone tower records - bonyt
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/technology/wp/2018/06/22/supreme-court-says-government-needed-warrant-to-search-cellphone-tower-records/
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paidleaf
Duplicate. The top post right now.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17374440](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17374440)

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rayiner
This case presents a very interesting look at the different methods of
Constitutional analysis. The gist of the majority's reasoning is that under
_Katz_ (the applicable precedent addressing the scope of the Fourth
Amendment), what matters is that someone has a "reasonable" expectation of
privacy in the subject of the search. _Katz_ takes a classically functional
approach to the question: it looks at (the Justices' conception of) what
problem the text was trying to solve, and interprets the text in that context.
It concludes that location data is protected because people reasonably expect
that their whereabouts from cell tracking will be kept private.

The dissent takes a textual approach. It points out that the Constitutional
text says nothing about "expectations of privacy" but rather protect's a
specific person's property: It protects the "right of the people to be secure
in _their_ persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches
and seizures." As Justice Thomas points out, it is undisputed that the cell
phone records do not _belong_ to the individual. Cell phone records are
information _about_ people, not "their" information. (Just like all of the
records, Google, Facebook, etc., have _about you_ remain Google, Facebook,
etc.'s private property, not yours).

This case eviscerates third party doctrine. Third party doctrine can often be
described in a _Katz_ formulation (one cannot have a "reasonable" expectation
of privacy in information you have chosen to share with third parties). But
more deeply, it reflects the basic textual restriction in the Fourth Amendment
to protecting things that are _yours_ (not _about you_ ). It'll have major
ramifications for similar searches directed at companies like Google,
Facebook, etc., and may result in courts determining that warrants are
required for such data requests as well.

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bonyt
Here is the opinion:
[https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf)

