U.S. appeals court: No warrant needed for stored cellphone location data
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...90e28e-f34d-11e4-b2f3-af5479e6bbdd_story.html
The case arises out of the 2012 conviction of Quartavious Davis for a string of robberies in the Miami area. He appealed his conviction, in part, on grounds that the cellphone tower records used to place him near the crime scenes were obtained on a court order and should have required a warrant.
Federal investigators obtained Davis’s records with a court order based on “specific and articulable facts” showing “reasonable grounds” to believe that his cell tower location records were “relevant and material” to the investigation. That is a lesser standard than a warrant based on probable cause that the records sought will yield evidence of the crime.
“Cell tower location records do not contain private communications of the subscriber,” the court said in its ruling. “This type of non-content evidence, lawfully created by a third-party telephone company . . . does not belong to Davis, even if it concerns him. . . . Davis has no subjective or objective reasonable expectation of privacy in [the phone company’s] business records showing the cell tower locations that wirelessly connected his calls at or near the time of six of the seven robberies.”