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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carpenter v. United States | 2/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_v._United_States | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T12:51:27.219105+00:00 | kb-cron |
Ultimately, in Carpenter the court determined that the third-party doctrine could not be extended to historical cell site location information (CSLI). Instead, the Court compared "detailed, encyclopedic, and effortlessly compiled" CSLI records to the GPS information at issue in United States v. Jones, recognizing that both forms of data accord the government the ability to track individuals' past movements. Furthermore, the Court noted that CSLI could pose even greater privacy risks than GPS data, as the prevalence of cellphones could accord the government "near perfect surveillance" of an individual's movements. Accordingly, the Court ruled that, under the Fourth Amendment, the government must obtain a search warrant in order to access historical CSLI records. Roberts argued that technology "has afforded law enforcement a powerful new tool to carry out its important responsibilities. At the same time, this tool risks Government encroachment of the sort the Framers [of the U.S. Constitution], after consulting the lessons of history, drafted the Fourth Amendment to prevent." As stated in the opinion, "Unlike the nosy neighbor who keeps an eye on comings and goings, they [new technologies] are ever alert, and their memory is nearly infallible. There is a world of difference between the limited types of personal information addressed in Smith [...] and the exhaustive chronicle of location information casually collected by wireless carriers today." However, Roberts stressed that the Carpenter decision was a very narrow one and did not affect other uses of the third-party doctrine, such as searches of banking records. Similarly, he noted that the decision did not prevent the collection of CSLI without a warrant in cases of emergency or for issues of national security.
=== Dissenting opinions === Justice Anthony Kennedy, in a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, cautioned against the limitations on law enforcement inherent in the majority opinion. According to Kennedy, the ruling "places undue restrictions on the lawful and necessary enforcement powers exercised not only by the Federal Government, but also by law enforcement in every State and locality throughout the Nation. Adherence to this Court's longstanding precedents and analytic framework would have been the proper and prudent way to resolve this case." In another dissent, Alito wrote: "I fear that today's decision will do far more harm than good. The Court's reasoning fractures two fundamental pillars of Fourth Amendment law, and in doing so, it guarantees a blizzard of litigation while threatening many legitimate and valuable investigative practices upon which law enforcement has rightfully come to rely." In his own dissenting opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch argued that the Fourth Amendment had lost its original meaning based on property rights, stating that it "grants you the right to invoke its guarantees whenever one of your protected things (your person, your house, your papers, or your effects) is unreasonably searched or seized. Period." Gorsuch further recommended that the third-party doctrine, as well as Katz v. United States, be overturned as inconsistent with the original meaning and application of the Fourth Amendment. On the facts of the case, Gorsuch stressed that CSLI data is personal property, and its storage by telephone companies should be immaterial as the company is serving, in effect, as a bailee. In yet another dissenting opinion, Thomas argued that what mattered was not if there was a search, but rather whose property was searched. Thomas argued that the Fourth Amendment guarantees each person to be secure from unreasonable searches in their own property. He argued that the cell phone records are the property of the phone service provider, as Carpenter did not keep or maintain the records, nor could he destroy them. Therefore, Carpenter could not bring suit under a Fourth Amendment violation, since it was not his property that was searched. Additionally, Thomas criticized the Katz framework that was used in the majority decision as well as many other surveillance-related cases before the Supreme Court. Thomas said that the Katz test had "no basis in the text or history of the Fourth Amendment. And, it invites courts to make judgements about policy, not law." Thomas also opined that "The Fourth Amendment, as relevant here, protects '[t]he right of people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches.' By defining 'search' to mean 'any violation of reasonable expectations of privacy,' the Katz test misconstrues virtually every one of those words." Thomas concluded by saying the Katz test is a failed experiment, and that the court should reconsider it.
== Impact and subsequent developments == After the Supreme Court ruling, Carpenter's criminal conviction was remanded to the Sixth Circuit to determine if it could stand without the CSLI data that required a warrant per the Supreme Court. Carpenter's lawyers argued that the data should have been subject to the exclusionary rule and thrown out as material collected without a proper warrant under the Supreme Court's ruling. However, the Circuit Court judges concluded that the FBI was acting in good faith with respect to collecting the data based on the law at the time the crimes were committed. This type of good faith exemption is permitted per another Supreme Court precedent, Davis v. United States (2011). The evidence was allowed to stand, and the Sixth Circuit again upheld Carpenter's criminal conviction and prison sentence. His arguments concerning sentencing procedures under the recently enacted First Step Act were rejected. The Supreme Court's ruling in Carpenter was narrow and did not otherwise change the third-party doctrine related to other business records that might incidentally reveal location information, nor did it overrule prior decisions concerning conventional surveillance techniques and tools such as security cameras. The Court did not extend its ruling to other matters related to cellphones not presented in Carpenter, including real-time CSLI or "tower dumps" (the downloading of information about all the devices that were connected to a particular cell site during a particular interval). The opinion also did not consider other data collection goals involving foreign affairs or national security.
== References ==