By Lyndsey Kelly
Impunity Watch Report, North America

WASHINGTON D.C., United States of America – On Thursday, 16 October 2014, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that police must obtain warrants prior to tracking criminal suspects through cellphone location signals. Federal appeals courts around the country have recently debated cell phone privacy, as opponents to the practice believe it violates the Fourth Amendment Constitutional right which protects American citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.

Chief Justice Jorge Labarga wrote in a 5-2 decision, “…cell phone tracking can easily invade the right to privacy in one’s home or other private areas.” The case came before the Florida Supreme Court when defendant Shawn Tracey accused the Broward County Sheriff’s department of lacking probable cause for a court order to obtain cellphone data of cite locations. Justice Labarga reasoned, “regardless of Tracey’s location on public roads, the use of his cell site location information emanating from his cell phone in order to track him in real time was a search with the purview of the Fourth Amendment for which probable cause was required.”

The majority of the court agreed in stating that cellphones are a routine way of life, and Floridians should expect a certain level of privacy in how they use them. The justices stated that it is unreasonable to expect citizens to turn off their cell phones to avoid their movements being tracked, ”requiring a cellphone user to turn off the cellphone just to assure privacy from governmental searches…places an unreasonable burden on the user to forego necessary use of his cellphone, a device now considered essential.”

The American Civil Liberties Union supported the ruling stating that technology is changing at a rapid rate and that the Constitution’s protects must keep up with the changing times. Justice Charles Canady wrote in his decent that most individuals know how cellphones work and that they communicate with a cellphone tower that records their location.

 

For more information, please see the following:

 ABC NEWS – Florida High Court Puts Limits on Phone Tracking – 16 Oct. 2014.

CBS LOCAL MIAMI – Supreme Court Rejects Cell Phone Tracking By Police – 16 Oct. 2014

FOX NEWS – Florida Supreme Court Puts Limits On Police Tracking People Through Their Cellphones – 16 Oct. 2014.

REUTERS – Florida High Court Says Police Need Warrants To Track Cellphones – 16 Oct. 2014.