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ars technica: Obama admin wants warrantless access to cell phone location data by Timothy B. Lee:

A Maryland court last week ruled that the government does not need a warrant to force a cell phone provider to disclose more than six months of data on the movements of one of its customers. Two defendants had been accused of armed robbery, and a key piece of evidence against them was data about the movements of the pair's cell phones. The defendants had sought to suppress this location evidence because the government did not get a warrant before seeking the data from network providers. But last Thursday, Judge Richard D. Bennett ruled that a warrant is not required to obtain cell-site location records (CSLR) from a wireless carrier.

Courts all over the country have been wrestling with this question, and the government has been on something of a winning streak. While one court ruled last year that such information requests violate the Fourth Amendment, most others have reached the opposite conclusion.

The Obama administration laid out its position in a legal brief last month, arguing that customers have "no privacy interest" in CSLR held by a network provider. Under a legal principle known as the "third-party doctrine," information voluntarily disclosed to a third party ceases to enjoy Fourth Amendment protection. The government contends that this rule applies to cell phone location data collected by a network provider.

LOUISIANA

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Volokh: Concurring Opinions in Jones Lead FBI To Turn Off 3,000 GPS Devices, Considered a “Sea Change” Within the Bureau by Orin Kerr:

Earlier today, I sent off to law reviews a new draft article on the implications of the mosaic theory of the Fourth Amendment introduced in the GPS case, United States v. Jones — and specifically the majority opinion for the DC Circuit (under the name United States v. Maynard ) and the concurring opinions of Justice Alito and Sotomayor. A recent speech by the general counsel of the FBI suggests that I’m not the only one who thinks that the mosaic theory is a really big deal — and a lot more complicated than many realize:

A Supreme Court decision has caused a “sea change” in law enforcement, prompting the FBI to turn off nearly 3,000 Global Positioning System (GPS) devices used to track suspects, according to the agency’s general counsel.

When the decision-U.S. v. Jones-was released at the end of January, agents were ordered to stop using GPS devices immediately and told to await guidance on retrieving the devices, FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann said in a recent talk at a University of San Francisco conference. Weissmann said the court’s ruling lacked clarity and the agency needs new guidance or it risks having cases overturned . . .

Weissmann said it wasn’t Scalia’s majority opinion that caused such turmoil in the bureau, but a concurring opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito. Alito, whose opinion was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, agreed with the Court’s conclusion in the case but wrote separately because his legal reasoning differed from the majority.

Alito focused not on the attachment of the device, but the fact that law enforcement monitored Jones for about a month. Alito said “the use of longer-term GPS monitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on expectations of privacy.” . . .

In his talk at a University of San Francisco Law Review Symposium, Weissmann suggested that Alito’s concurrence means that several members of the court are concerned with long-term surveillance by technologies beyond GPS systems and that the FBI needs new guidance in order to ensure that evidence does not get thrown out.

“I just can’t stress enough,” Weissmann said, “what a sea change that is perceived to be within the department.”

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