Data Without a Warrant is Speculation

In the United States the findings of courts are hierarchical with the Circuit Courts being the last step before the Supreme Court.  The findings by these courts are important as precedent.  Last week there was one by the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, VA that will change the way some people think about their electronic devices.  Under this ruling, location data from phones, and perhaps other devices like your car, do not require a warrant for law enforcement.  You will shortly hear all kinds of speculation about what and where this can be extracted and most of it will be wrong.

The Senior Business Editor, Cyrus Farivar, at Ars Technica has an article on this at [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/05/cops-can-easily-get-hundreds-of-days-of-location-data-appeals-court-rules/] that fans the speculation about what might be collected by law enforcement.  Without being a lawyer (and I am not) you can read other cases on this subject and see that it will have to be further defined to be applied.  One year ago,  the same court held  that location data could not be collected for long periods - not defined, but 221 days was too long - without a warrant.  The current decision was based more on third party doctrine, that the data was voluntarily given to the cell phone carrier.  The decision says, "The government did not surreptitiously view, listen to, record, or in any other way engage in direct surveillance of Defendants to obtain this information."  If that ruling holds up, all kinds of data that is supplied to third parties could be available to law enforcement.

Just think of all the data about us that is collected by third parties.