It’s June, and that means the Supreme Court will be issuing the last opinions of the Term. There are some biggies, including the cell-site data case in Carpenter. USA Today says it’s been a good Term so far for privacy, but that will all change if the Court rules for the Government in Carpenter. Here’s the USA Today intro:
Terrence Byrd was arrested in Pennsylvania four years ago with body armor and 49 bricks of heroin in the trunk of a rental car he wasn't authorized to drive.
Ryan Collins was picked up a year earlier in Virginia with a stolen, orange-and-black motorcycle that twice had sped away from police.
Both men contested their arrests all the way to the Supreme Court, which last month ruled overwhelmingly in their favor for the same reason: Their privacy was breached.
In Byrd's case, the justices ruled 9-0 that his absence from the rental policy did not give police the right to search the car. Collins, they reasoned by an 8-1 margin, was protected because police invaded his girlfriend's private property without a warrant.
And in the coming weeks, the justices will decide whether police can track the past locations of suspects' cellphones for weeks or months in order to connect them to crimes under investigation. From the sound of oral arguments last November, the answer appeared to be no.
“They’re no longer disagreeing on whether there’s a right to privacy," says Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which seeks to protect privacy and civil liberties in the information age. "You're finding a high level of agreement on both wings of the court."
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