[0:03]On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled that cops need a search warrant before getting data from your cell phone that shows where you were and when. It's a major privacy decision and sets one of the strongest legal limits yet on how the government can access your data. But the justice has also stressed that their ruling was narrow and only applies to the type of data in question, historical cell phone location information.
[0:29]Not real-time sell records or national security surveillance, for example. The ACLU argued this case on behalf of Timothy Carpenter, who was arrested for a series of robberies around Detroit. largely because data from his cell phone put him near the crimes. Records of where you use your phone can construct a detailed portrait of your life. Where you eat, work, study, or pray, and even if you're having an affair. But the FBI didn't get a warrant for Carpenter's location data, because back in 2011, it didn't need to. Until Friday, those records weren't federally protected by the Fourth Amendment, which guards against warrantless search and seizure. Because users choose to give those records to a third party, their cell service provider. This Fourth Amendment caveat is known as the third-party doctrine, and arguments in Carpenter versus U.S. centered around whether it holds up in the 21st century. When disclosing your personal data to third-party companies is basically unavoidable. So tech firms have something at stake in this case too, and some of them, including Facebook, filed a joint brief with the court. The companies said they weren't picking a side, but did argue that the government should have a more nuanced view of what kind of information it can scoop up without a warrant. Friday's decision basically agreed with that, saying there's a world of difference between digital location data and the types of data the doctrine originally applied to, like bank records and telephone numbers. Even though Friday's ruling focused only on certain types of location data, that clarification of how the third-party doctrine should be applied to modern technologies sets a big precedent for what types of information the Fourth Amendment protects. And as more facets of daily life are automated and recorded by corporations, that could have implications for things that go beyond the places where you've been using your phone.
