High court: Police need a warrant for cellphone tracking data

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a major decision Friday upholding privacy rights in the digital age, ruling police need search warrants to track criminal suspects’ movements using cellphone location data. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts described cellphone data as “detailed, encyclopedic, and effortlessly compiled,” noting “an individual maintains a legitimate expectation of privacy in the record of his physical movements.” Roberts joined his four liberal colleagues, a rare division of the conservative justices. The four dissenting justices each wrote separate protest opinions, mostly focused on the ruling’s negative effect on policing. The American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the defendant in the case, called it a “groundbreaking victory.” In his majority opinion, Roberts noted police could still obtain records without a warrant when responding to an emergency.