Can Police Track You Through Your Cellphone Without A Warrant?

The U.S. Supreme Court confronts the digital age again on Wednesday when it hears oral arguments in a case that promises to have major repercussions for law enforcement and personal privacy.

At issue is whether police have to get a search warrant in order to obtain cellphone location information that is routinely collected and stored by wireless providers.

Cellphone thieves caught because they used ... cellphones
The irony of the case before the court, Carpenter v. United States, is that it involves massive cellphone thefts and a string of armed robberies at Radio Shacks in Michigan and Ohio. The robbers entered the stores, guns drawn, herded patrons to the back, loaded up laundry bags with new smartphones, and then later sold their booty to fences for tens of thousands of dollars per haul.

In April of 2011, police arrested four men, one of whom confessed that he and a shifting group of 15 others had robbed nine different stores over the previous year. The suspect identified Timothy Carpenter as one of the ringleaders. The thieves all pleaded guilty, except for Carpenter and his half-brother.

At their trial, the icing on the prosecution's case was the cellphone location information recorded by Carpenter's wireless provider for each of the calls he placed or received on the dates of the robberies.

This was seven years ago, and several smartphone generations ago, too. The information used at Carpenter's trial was not exactly precise. It did not record where he was when he texted, or where he was when his phone was not in use. But when he made or received calls, the cellphone towers nearby recorded his general location, with an accuracy range of about a half mile to 2 miles. And those calls matched up rather nicely with the vicinity of the robberies. - More, NPR

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