The U.S. Supreme Court rules that constitutional privacy protections apply to cellphone users’ location information. The decision addresses whether people retain a reasonable expectation of privacy in location data when smartphones generate it continuously and potentially convey it to others. The Court holds that the government generally must obtain a valid warrant to access such location history, extending Fourth Amendment protections to cell-site and related location records used to track a device’s movements.
The ruling comes in a criminal case involving a bank robbery. Prosecutors identify a suspect using a “geofence warrant,” which seeks records for devices present in a specific geographic area during a defined time period. The Court’s ruling means that evidence derived from accessing cellphone location history under such circumstances must comply with constitutional requirements.
Across the coverage, outlets describe the decision as clarifying that long-term or ongoing location tracking tied to a phone is covered by privacy protections, and that the government’s use of that data is constrained by the Fourth Amendment.
