Carpenter v. United States

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Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296 (2018), is a landmark United States Supreme Court case concerning the privacy of historical cell site location information (CSLI). The Court held that government entities violate the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution when accessing historical CSLI records containing the physical locations of cellphones without a search warrant .[1]

Prior to Carpenter, government entities could obtain cellphone location records from service providers by claiming the information was required as part of an investigation, without a warrant, but the ruling changed this procedure. Recognizing the influence of new consumer communications devices in the 2010s, the Court expanded its conceptions of constitutional rights toward the privacy of this type of data. However, the Court emphasized that the Carpenter ruling was narrowly restricted to the precise types of information and search procedures that were relevant to this case.[2] [3]

Contents

• 1 Background

  • 1.1 Cell site location information (CSLI)

  • 1.2 Third-party doctrine

• 2 Case Background

  • 2.1 Appeal at the Sixth Circuit

• 3 Supreme Court

  • 3.1 Dissenting opinions

• 4 Impact and subsequent developments

• 5 References

• 6 Further reading

• 7 External links

Background

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Carpenter_v._United_States&action=edit&section=1 "Edit section: Background")

Cell site location information (CSLI)

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Carpenter_v._United_States&action=edit&section=2 "Edit section: Cell site location information (CSLI)")

Cellular telephone service providers are able to find the location of cell phones through either Global Positioning System (GPS) data or cell site location information (CSLI), in the process of connecting calls and data transmissions. CSLI is captured by nearby cell towers , and this information is used to triangulate the location of phones.[4] Service providers capture and store this data for business purposes, such as troubleshooting, maximizing network efficiencies, and determining whether to charge customers roaming fees for particular calls.[5]

The data can also illustrate the historical movements of a cellphone. Thus, anyone with access to this data has the ability to know where the phone has been and what other cell phones were in the same area at a given time. When users travel with their cellphones, this data can theoretically illustrate every place a person has traveled, and possibly the locations of other people encountered via their corresponding data.[6]

Third-party doctrine

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Prior to Carpenter, the Supreme Court consistently held that a person had no reasonable expectation of privacy in regard to information voluntarily turned over to third-parties such as telephone companies, and therefore a search warrant is not required when government officials seek this information.[7] This legal theory is known as the third-party doctrine , established by the Supreme Court in _Smith v. Maryland _ (1979), in which the Court determined that government officials can obtain a list of phone numbers dialed from a suspect's phone.[8]

By the 2010s, cellphones and particularly smartphones had become important tools for nearly every person in the United States.[9] Many applications, such as GPS navigation and location tools, require a phone to send and receive information constantly, including the exact location of the phone, often without intent on the part of its owner. As technology advanced in the 2010s, the Supreme Court began to modify its precedents on government searches of personal communications devices, given new consumer behaviors that may transcend the third-party doctrine.[10]

Case Background

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Between December 2010 and March 2011, several individuals in the Detroit , Michigan area conspired and participated in armed robberies at RadioShack and T-Mobile stores across the region.[11] In April 2011, four of the robbers were captured and arrested. The petitioner, Timothy Carpenter, was not among the initial group of arrestees. One of those arrested confessed and turned over his phone so that FBI agents could review the calls made from his phone around the time of the robberies.[1] The agents obtained a search warrant to inspect the information in that arrestee's phone, in order to find additional contacts of the arrestee and compile more evidence about the crime ring.[12] [13]

From the historical cell site records on the arrestee's phone, the agents confirmed that Timothy Carpenter was also part of the crime ring, and proceeded to compile information about the location of his phone over 127 days. In turn, this information revealed that Carpenter had been within a two-mile radius of four robberies at the times they were perpetrated.[1] This evidence was used to support Carpenter's arrest. At criminal court, Carpenter was found guilty of several counts of aiding and abetting robberies that affected interstate commerce, and another count of using a firearm during a violent crime. He was sentenced to 116 years in prison.[14]

Appeal at the Sixth Circuit

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Carpenter appealed his conviction and sentencing to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit , arguing that the CSLI evidence used against him should be suppressed because the police had not obtained a warrant pertaining to his CSLI records before searching through them. In 2015, the Circuit Court upheld Carpenter's conviction.[15] This ruling was largely based on the _Smith v. Maryland _ precedent, stating that Carpenter used cellular telephone networks voluntarily, and per the third-party doctrine he had no reasonable expectation that the data should be private. Thus, review of that information by the police did not constitute a "search " and did not require a warrant under the Fourth Amendment .[16]

Carpenter appealed this ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, which granted _certiorari _ in 2016.[17] [18]

Supreme Court

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Carpenter_v._United_States&action=edit&section=6 "Edit section: Supreme Court")

[Oral arguments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carpenter_v._United

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