The Supreme Court ruled that police generally need a search warrant to review cell phone records.
The plaintiff in the case, Timothy Carpenter, was convicted of multiple robbery and gun offenses in 2010 but challenged the conviction saying that officers investigating the case didn't get a warrant for his cell phone records. The government argued that law enforcement doesn't need a warrant to get cell phone records from the service provider since it's a third party.
The Court ruled that the government's search did not meet the bar for probable cause for a warrant because investigators only had to show that argue the cell phone data might be related to an ongoing investigation in order to get access to it from the cell phone provider.
Law professor Kate Shaw said that the ruling is in line with some of the Court's other efforts to update the Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable search and seizure to keep up with new technology.
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