By Brandi Vincent, March 22, 2019,
Lawmakers want the attorney general to explain how the collection of cellular location data has changed following a recent SCOTUS decision.
A bipartisan group of senators questioned the Justice Department this week regarding how the government’s treatment of cellphone-generated location data in national security cases has changed in lieu of the Supreme Court decision in Carpenter v. United States last June.
The Carpenter case addressed the application of the Fourth Amendment to cell-site location information, or CSLI, which are geolocation records produced by users’ cell phones communicating with cell towers and stored by wireless providers. The court held that because CSLI provides “an intimate window into a person’s life,” police must obtain a warrant to collect it.
Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Rand Paul, R-Ky., Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Steve Daines, R-Mont., penned a letter to recently appointed Attorney General William Barr probing his views on the broad collection of cellular metadata and asking a series of questions encompassing how the Carpenter decision has impacted the practices and policies of government surveillance.
“In light of the Carpenter decision and the recognition of Americans’ legitimate interest in privacy around CSLI, the American public deserves to know how the intelligence community treats these records and other sensitive metadata in national security cases,” the senators wrote.
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