Privacy Groups Want Supreme Court to Review Warrantless Cellphone Tracking Case

The Center for Democracy & Technology, Constitution Project and Electronic Frontier Foundation are asking the Supreme Court to review a drug trafficking case in which the 6th U.S. Court of Appeals decided police could track people's cellphones without a warrant. EFF said in a Monday news release the high court should review U.S. v. Rios "and make clear that the Fourth Amendment requires a warrant for real-time location tracking -- whether the tracking occurs via a GPS device on your car or the collection of location data generated by cell phones or other Internet-connected devices." Police did get a warrant to track the defendant's cellphone in the Rios case, but EFF said the 6th Circuit decided a warrant wasn't needed. EFF said the court based its ruling on a "flawed 2012 decision" that said, in an unrelated drug trafficking case, such data doesn't have any privacy protections "because people 'voluntarily' carry cell phones with them." However, EFF said a Florida Supreme Court ruling in a separate case said people do have privacy for cellphone location records.