The Members Forum

The FBI and other police agencies don't need a search warrant to track the locations of Americans' cell phones, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday in a precedent-setting decision.

In the first decision of its kind, a Philadelphia appeals court agreed with the Obama administration that no search warrant--signed by a judge based on a belief that there was probable cause to suspect criminal activity--was necessary for police to obtain logs showing where a cell phone user had traveled in the past.

A three-judge panel of the Third Circuit said (PDF) that tracking cell phones "does not require the traditional probable cause determination" normally required by the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits government agencies from conducting "unreasonable" searches. But the panel did side with civil liberties groups on another point: it agreed that, in at least some cases, judges have the authority to require investigators to obtain a search warrant. That is, however, "an option to be used sparingly," the court said.

In this case, the Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permissible because Americans enjoy no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in their--or at least their cell phones'--whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers have said that "a customer's Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records" that show where a mobile device placed and received calls.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, said it needed historical (meaning stored, not future) phone location information because a set of suspects "use their wireless telephones to arrange meetings and transactions in furtherance of their drug trafficking activities."

Cnet has the details HERE!