Judge rules that cops need warrants to access cellphone location data

A federal judge has ruled that cops need to get a warrant if they want to access a person’s past cellphone location data, in what digital rights activists call a big win for privacy. Currently, police can access your cellphone records, including information about your past locations, without a court order. On Monday, Judge Susan Illston, of the Northern District of California, ruled against that doctrine, saying that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their historical location data collected by cellphone providers. That means historical location data collected from cell towers is protected by the 4th Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. Cellphones are “ubiquitous” and “an indispensable gizmo” for many people, and they transmit “enormous amounts of data,” including details people’s location, Judge Illston wrote in her opinion, which was publishe​d online on Thursday. That’s why, she argued, this data deserves special protection.