Florida Supreme Court Rejects Cell Phone Tracking by Police
http://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/post/fl-supreme-court-rejects-cell-phone-tracking-police
Fl. Supreme Court Rejects Cell Phone Tracking by Police
By Jim Saunders of The News Service of Florida
Pointing to privacy rights, the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday said police need to get warrants before using cell-phone information to conduct "real-time" tracking of criminal suspects.
Justices, in a 5-2 decision, sided with a man who was arrested in 2007 in Broward County after a search of his vehicle uncovered a kilogram brick of cocaine hidden in a spare-tire well. Police tracked the man, Shawn Alvin Tracey, through location information given off when cell-phone calls are made.
In a 46-page majority opinion, Chief Justice Jorge Labarga wrote that using the information without a warrant violated Tracey's Fourth Amendment constitutional rights, which protect people from unreasonable searches and seizures. Labarga, in ruling that evidence against Tracey should be suppressed, also pointed to the public's dependence on cell phones.
"We cannot overlook the inexorable and significant fact that, because cell phones are indispensable to so many people and are normally carried on one's person, cell phone tracking can easily invade the right to privacy in one's home or other private areas, a matter that the government cannot always anticipate and one which, when it occurs, is clearly a Fourth Amendment violation,'' wrote Labarga, who was joined in the majority by justices Barbara Pariente, R. Fred Lewis, Peggy Quince and James E.C. Perry.
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