Cell signal: What high court ruling may mean for future of digital privacy

In a 5-to-4 decision today, the US Supreme Court updated privacy protections in the digital age, ruling that historic location data collected by from individual cellphones is protected by the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution.

Given the routine advancement in communications technologies, especially in recent years with the proliferation of smartphones, the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches by the government has been one of the most routinely reinterpreted constitutional amendments. The decision this morning – in which Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the court’s four left-leaning justices – continues that trend, and reinforces suspicions the high court has voiced in the past about how rapid technological advancements could implicate personal privacy.

Chief Justice Roberts was careful to detail the narrow parameters of the majority’s decision in his 27-page opinion. Nevertheless, four separate dissenting opinions totaling 92 pages suggests that lower courts now have a significant task ahead of them tackling the many questions the decision is likely to raise.

“It’s a gigantic decision for Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,” says Christopher Slobogin, director of the Criminal Justice Program at Vanderbilt Law School…

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