TownHall.com: Federal Court: Why Yes, The Police Can Track Your Phone Without A Warrant // misleading headline

TownHall.com: Federal Court: Why Yes, The Police Can Track Your Phone Without A Warrant by Matt Vespa:

Data collection and tracking are getting their fair share of scrutiny from the courts, though not all opinions are favorable for those who wish to preserve Fourth Amendment protections and privacy. Last week, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the police don’t need warrant to track the cellphones of suspected felons (WSJ):

Police don’t need a warrant to track the cellphones of criminal suspects, a federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday, reversing an early decision in a closely watched privacy case. …

OK, maybe it’s the WSJ’s line that leads to the misunderstanding, but that’s the problem with repeating without knowing and it’s manifestly not what the court says: The case is all about the third-party doctrine and your telephone company keeping records of where your phone has been, not the police tracking it. BIG difference. In Jones, the Court held GPS tracking of a car requires a warrant, and March 30th the Court held in Grady v. North Carolina that GPS tracking of a sex offender implicates the Fourth Amendment. Does that mean that SCOTUS will hold that real time tracking of a cell phone requires a warrant under the Fourth Amendment? What about the third-party doctrine and Big Data? We don’t know yet.

The moral to the story? Don’t talk about cases without reading the case. The Wall Street Journal’s filtered version is not what the case says.