(Reuters) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday imposed limits on the ability of police to obtain cellphone data pinpointing the past location of criminal suspects in a major victory for digital privacy advocates and a setback for law enforcement authorities. Photo: Getty

On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled in a five-to-four decision that law enforcement generally must obtain a warrant to gather cellphone location data from network providers. The Supreme Court ruled that police generally need a search warrant to review cell phone records that include data like a user's location, which will impose a higher bar for law enforcement to access data collected on the millions of people who use smartphones on a daily basis.The plaintiff in the case, Timothy Carpenter, was convicted of multiple robbery and gun offenses in 2010 but challenged the conviction saying that officers investigating the case didn't get a warrant for his cell phone records. The Supreme Court on Friday ruled the government needs a warrant to obtain your personal cell phone location data — a pro-criminal-defendant decision that strengthens Fourth Amendment protections against “unreasonable searches and seizures.”

The court ruled 5-4 that a precedent known as the third-party records doctrine, which says the Fourth Amendment does not apply to information individuals voluntarily share with a third party, is not applicable to personal cell phone location data. The government argued that law enforcement doesn't need a warrant to get cell phone records from the service provider since it's a third party.The Court ruled that the government's search, in this case, did not meet the bar for probable cause for a warrant because investigators only had to show that argue the cell phone data might be related to an ongoing investigation in order to get access to it from the cell phone provider.Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority decision that the government is obligated to get a warrant before compelling a wireless provider to provide cell phone records in an investigation.
The U.S. Supreme Court, by a 5–4 vote, rules law enforcement are required to obtain a search warrant to gather location data from cell phone companies.