Court issues important 4th Amendment ruling

A federal judge in Pennsylvania has rejected an attempt by the Bush administration to weaken constitutional protections by allowing the government to obtain data from cell phone companies on individual users without a warrant.

The case involves cell phone location information, data stored by cell phone companies that tracks the location of individual users when they use their cell phones based on which cell towers are used in the call. The Department of Justice wanted the court to overturn a magistrate judge’s ruling that required the government to show probable cause and get a warrant in order to demand such information from cell phone companies.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said in a press release:

“Cell phone providers store an increasing amount of sensitive data about where you are and when, based on which cell towers your phone uses when making a call. Until now, the government has routinely seized these records without search warrants,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. “This landmark ruling is hopefully only the first of many. Just as magistrates across the country have begun denying government requests to track cell phones in real-time without warrants, based on arguments first made by EFF, so too do we hope this decision will spark new scrutiny of the government’s unconstitutional seizure of stored cell phone location records.”

One can imagine how President Bush would respond to such a ruling: “The 4th Amendment? Didn’t we get rid of that after 9/11?” Or for that matter, John McCain: “You know, when I was a POW we didn’t have cell phone location information.”