Several high-profile technology companies, including Apple, Airbnb, Cisco, Dropbox, Evernote, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Snap, Twitter, and Verizon have submitted a amicus brief in a key case at the U.S. Supreme Court, expressing concerns about warrantless police access to cellphone location data.
The tech firms argue that the court should “refine the applic Timothy Carpenter v. United States action of certain Fourth Amendment doctrines to ensure that the law realistically engages with Internet-based technologies and with people’s expectations of privacy in their digital data.”
The case in question is Timothy Carpenter v. United States. Police obtained Carpenter’s location history without a warrant, leading to his eventual robbery conviction. At court he’s being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, which says that the government violated Fourth Amendment rights against search and seizure.
