Fourth Amendment Protection in the Digital Age

The Supreme Court granted certiorari in Carpenter v United States, a case that offers the Court another opportunity to address how far Fourth Amendment protections against warrantless searches and seizures extend. Specifically, the issue before the Court was “whether the warrantless seizure and search of historical cell phone records revealing the locations and movement of a cell phone user over the course of 127 days is permitted by the Fourth Amendment.” On appeal before the Sixth Circuit, a divided three-judge panel held that “no search occurred under the Fourth Amendment because Carpenter had no reasonable expectation of privacy in cell phone location records held by his service provider.” The prosecution contended that cell-phone users “presumably understand that their phones convey data to their service providers as a necessary incident of making or receiving calls.