The Electronic Frontier Foundation recently filed an amicus brief in a Massachusetts appellate case regarding cell site location data. The trial court in Commonwealth v. Augustine had suppressed two weeks' worth of cell site data, finding that a search warrant was necessary to obtain it. The government then appealed.
According to the EFF release:
In our amicus brief, we urge the SJC to affirm the trial court, arguing that people maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy in their location—even their public movements—since society would deem it unlikely that anything more than small, discrete movements would be observed at a time....
Even the SJC itself has been a leader on location privacy. Earlier this year, it ruled in Commonwealth v. Rousseau that a passenger in a car had standing to challenge GPS surveillance because everyone, regardless of whether they are the car's owner or not, has an expectation of privacy in their location.
We hope that the SJC will extend Rousseau, recognize that the third party doctrine does not apply to invasive cell site monitoring, and require police obtain a search warrant to track a person's location through their cell phone.Read the EFF amicus brief by clicking here.
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