N.D.Ga.: Realtime CSLI for 24 hours based on exigency was reasonable under Carpenter

Realtime CSLI for one day to locate defendant and a child he had with him was reasonable under Carpenter. United States v. Castellanos, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 41654 (N.D. Ga. Feb. 17, 2023), adopted, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 40281 (N.D. Ga., Mar. 10, 2023):

The upshot of Hammond and Howard is that Carpenter should not be extended categorically to all real-time CSLI. Those decisions take the view that whether a Fourth Amendment violation has occurred instead depends on how much data was captured and for how long, and more importantly, what the data reveals about an individual’s location and movements. Accord United States v. Dewilfond, 54 F.4th 578, 580-81 (8th Cir. 2022) (finding no Fourth Amendment violation where law enforcement monitored the defendant’s movements on public roadways for two days using a GPS tracker that a cooperating source had consented to being installed); People v. Edwards, 63 Misc. 3d 827, 831, 97 N.Y.S.3d 418 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2019) (holding that two days’ worth of CSLI did not constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment because the state was not “using CSLI data in an effort to trace all of defendant’s movements over an extended period of time as part of a long-term investigation into defendant’s whereabouts and conduct”); cf. United States v. Baker, 563 F. Supp. 3d 361, 381 (E.D. Pa. 2021) (distinguishing Hammond and finding that government’s request for real-time CSLI of defendant’s phone constituted a search where it located the defendant within a private house).