Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Privacy Right In Historical Location Data Still In Question

There has been a good deal of discussion about a recent federal district court ruling that the government's need to obtain a warrant before obtaining cell phone records for historical location data. (See report from Wall Street Journal). However, most of the reports have been misleading as they have suggested that this is the only federal district court ruling on this subject. There have been at least two other district court decisions on this subject in other jurisdictions that have decided that the government does not need to obtain a warrant for such information. As a result, the most recent ruling does not makes things clearer. Instead, it adds more uncertainty.

2 comments:

ShavesWithOccamsRazor said...

Hi Kevin - can you give me the citation to these three decisions (or otherwise point me to where I can get a copy of them to read)?
Rick

Kevin said...

Rick,

Check out Digital Search and Seizure: Updating Privacy Protections to Keep Pace with Technology. (Center for Democracy and Technology, 2006). It has a good discussion of the issues and cites a few cases. If you sheppardize those you will find the three - and perhaps others.