Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional (404media.co)
(Friday April 18, 2025 @05:20PM (BeauHD)
from the cease-and-desist dept.)
- Reference: 0177061901
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/04/18/1941239/judge-rules-blanket-search-of-cell-tower-data-unconstitutional
- Source link: https://www.404media.co/judge-rules-blanket-search-of-cell-tower-data-unconstitutional/
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media:
> A judge in Nevada has ruled that "tower dumps" -- the law enforcement practice of grabbing vast troves of private personal data from cell towers -- [1]is unconstitutional . The judge also ruled that the cops could, this one time, still use the evidence they obtained through this unconstitutional search. Cell towers record the location of phones near them about every seven seconds. When the cops request a tower dump, they ask a telecom for the numbers and personal information of every single phone connected to a tower during a set time period. Depending on the area, these tower dumps can return tens of thousands of numbers. Cops have been able to sift through this data to solve crimes. But tower dumps are also a massive privacy violation that flies in the face of the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unlawful search and seizure. When the cops get a tower dump they're not just searching and seizing the data of a suspected criminal, they're sifting through the information of everyone who was in the location.
The ruling stems from a court case involving Cory Spurlock, a Nevada man charged with drug offenses and a murder-for-hire plot. He was implicated through a cellphone tower dump that law enforcement used to place his device near the scenes of the alleged crimes.
A federal judge ruled that the tower dump constituted an unconstitutional general search under the Fourth Amendment but declined to suppress the evidence, citing officers' good faith in obtaining a warrant. It marks the first time a court in the Ninth Circuit has ruled on the constitutionality of tower dumps, which in Spurlock's case captured location data from over 1,600 users -- many of whom had no way to opt out.
[1] https://www.404media.co/judge-rules-blanket-search-of-cell-tower-data-unconstitutional/
> A judge in Nevada has ruled that "tower dumps" -- the law enforcement practice of grabbing vast troves of private personal data from cell towers -- [1]is unconstitutional . The judge also ruled that the cops could, this one time, still use the evidence they obtained through this unconstitutional search. Cell towers record the location of phones near them about every seven seconds. When the cops request a tower dump, they ask a telecom for the numbers and personal information of every single phone connected to a tower during a set time period. Depending on the area, these tower dumps can return tens of thousands of numbers. Cops have been able to sift through this data to solve crimes. But tower dumps are also a massive privacy violation that flies in the face of the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unlawful search and seizure. When the cops get a tower dump they're not just searching and seizing the data of a suspected criminal, they're sifting through the information of everyone who was in the location.
The ruling stems from a court case involving Cory Spurlock, a Nevada man charged with drug offenses and a murder-for-hire plot. He was implicated through a cellphone tower dump that law enforcement used to place his device near the scenes of the alleged crimes.
A federal judge ruled that the tower dump constituted an unconstitutional general search under the Fourth Amendment but declined to suppress the evidence, citing officers' good faith in obtaining a warrant. It marks the first time a court in the Ninth Circuit has ruled on the constitutionality of tower dumps, which in Spurlock's case captured location data from over 1,600 users -- many of whom had no way to opt out.
[1] https://www.404media.co/judge-rules-blanket-search-of-cell-tower-data-unconstitutional/
Couldn't foresee this (Score:2)
by sentiblue ( 3535839 )
The founding fathers who wrote the Constitution couldn't have possibly guessed how future technologies work. Not in this way.
Make policing hard (Score:2)
by Berkyjay ( 1225604 )
We really need to reverse this trend of making police work easier with laws and technology.
Re: (Score:2)
by Retired Chemist ( 5039029 )
I trust that this is sarcasm. However, making policing easier at the cost of the rights of the innocent is the path to a police state. Using phone data to track a suspect (with a warrant) is fine, but going through everyone in an area and looking for suspects is not.
How does that work? (Score:2)
How can a judge rule something to be unconstitutional but at the same time permit a violation of the constitution? That makes absolutely no sense. Either it's wrong and has always been wrong and is never permitted or what was done in this case was legal and remains legal because it does not violate constitutional rights. Regardless of how you feel about this, the ruling makes no sense for that reason.
Re: (Score:3)
The key words are "in good faith". The officers got a warrant from a court to get the information. The failure was of the judge who issued the warrant not the police. For reasons that escape me, this has long been considered a reason to allow the information obtained to be used.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure how the words "in good faith" make it okay to violate the constitution. Those are ultimately weasel words and enable the government to be tyrannical as long as they're doing so "in good faith". I don't care if the government is acting maliciously or "in good faith" against me if what they are doing is unconstitutional. They wouldn't excuse you or me for unknowingly violating the law, so why should we grant them the ability to violate the constitution for the belief that they acted "in good fait
Re: How does that work? (Score:2)
Laws are based on precedence, since he is the first to make the ruling on the subject, you can not claim that the cops or the courts should have known it was illegal. It was literally just deemed illegal by the judge for the first time. Since the cop applied for the warrant in good faith, and the evidence was only challenged after being obtained, it was legal when they got it via the search warrant and is now illegal for going forward in time.... yeah I know laws can be wonky.
Re: (Score:2)
> , and the evidence was only challenged after being obtained
It's too bad the accused didn't file in a timely manner before their accusation.
> it was legal when they got it via the search warrant and is now illegal
Courts determine when something was already illegal from the beginning.
If it was reasonable to expect they would have gotten the same results from the more narrow search that would have been legal, then that's really the only case where you can make an exception to allow the evidence.
Like if they found evidence of an unrelated crime due to gathering more data than was needed, it would be reasonable to expect that evidence to be
Re:How does that work? (Score:4, Insightful)
> How can a judge rule something to be unconstitutional but at the same time permit a violation of the constitution? That makes absolutely no sense. Either it's wrong and has always been wrong and is never permitted or what was done in this case was legal and remains legal because it does not violate constitutional rights. Regardless of how you feel about this, the ruling makes no sense for that reason.
Because the warrant violated the constitutional rights of other people but not the defendant. The warrant should have been issued to search only for the defendant's phone, and that would have been constitutional. Had the tower dump been done without a warrant, then the data would have to be tossed. The others besides the defendant could possibly sue for Fourth Amendment violations, but not the defendant.