SCOTUS To Take Up Cell Phone Tracking

The Supreme Court will consider whether police need a warrant to obtain customer location information from cell phone companies. A 1979 Supreme Court case, Smith V. Maryland, established the precedent that a robbery suspect had no reasonable expectation of privacy if he used a phone. The court reasoned then that the suspect had voluntarily turned over that information to a third party: the phone company. “The Supreme Court may in the future limit, or even eliminate, the third-party doctrine,” the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in its ruling rejecting the argument that the relaxed standard violated the Fourth Amendment. “But without a change in controlling law, we cannot conclude that the government violated the Fourth Amendment in this case.”