Apple has joined with Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon and others in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that 4th Amendment protections apply to cellphone location data. This would mean that location data could not be accessed without a warrant or court order.
The issue is before the Supreme Court as a result of a 2011 conviction …
As CNET notes, the court is reviewing a case where location data pulled without a warrant formed a key part of the evidence.
Apple and other tech companies are not arguing that law enforcement officials shouldn’t be able to obtain location data from cellphone records, only that doing so should require a warrant. Obtaining this information without a warrant should, they argue, be considered an illegal search.
Carpenter’s conviction hinged on his cell phone location data, and he lost an appeal at the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals last April. In the appellate decision, the judges ruled that cell phone location data didn’t merit Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and that the officers didn’t need a warrant, as Carpenter’s lawyers argued.
In the brief, supported by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the companies argue that requiring a warrant will allow them to reach their own decision as to whether there is a valid legal case for releasing the information.
The company says that it also wants to be transparent about how data is shared with law enforcement.
Other tech companies supporting the call for 4th amendment protections are Airbnb, Cisco, Dropbox, Evernote, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Nest, Snap, Twitter and Verizon.
Apple is committed its users’ privacy and to helping users understand how it handles their personal information. Apple strives to provide straightforward disclosures when it is compelled to comply with requests for user data from law enforcement.
