Reference no: EM132323776

Civil Liberties and the Supreme Court

Carpenter V. United States

In what was a big criminal case in Detroit, several suspects cell phone locations were tracked to prove a drug rings activity. This was going on for several months with no warrant granted with probable cause. Carpenter and his legal team argued after his conviction and in the appeals court that this very action violated his fourth amendment right and should vacate his conviction. This appeal set up a long and important fight that took our courts into a crossroads with regards to digital right being a part of the fourth amendment.

The Original Case and Information Seizure

Carpenter was convicted back in 2013 for a string of burglaries in the Detroit area. The FBI obtained his locations through a seizure of his stored location data for past months. Almost 13,000 data points were obtained by the agency. These data points showed everything about his life in the timeframe received. Agents were able to tell when and where he slept, went to church and much more. According to Chief Justice John Roberts, "when the Government tracks the location of a cell phone it achieves near perfect surveillance, as if it had attached an ankle monitor to the phone's user." (Wessler, 2018). The only problem being this perfect surveillance was done without any warrants. This set up the argument that all of this was done against his fourth amendment right.

The Fourth Amendment Right

The fourth amendment states that we all have "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized" ("America's Founding Documents", n.d.). At the time this was written there were no such things as cell phones, but our court system was tasked throughout this case to properly interpret its meaning regarding our security and privacy with cell phone use and data. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Carpenter in "Fourth Amendment must apply to records of such unprecedented breadth and sensitivity" ("America's Founding Documents", n.d.). By viewing someone's mapped out timestamped locations we get to see very intimately where a person is going and quite possibly what they are doing, and when there are doing it. Not that we have things to hide for some of us, but I still think we are entitled to that level of privacy.

FBI Claims no Right Infringement

The Governments lawyers argues that when we share our information with a "third party" in this case the cellphone company that we forfeit our Fourth Amendment right for that information when doing so. That would mean that phone call information, text messages, and even our GPS data would no longer be our information to protect as it is shared with the cellphone company and that we no longer have exclusives rights to the information and the cellphone company is free to share that information however they want. This basis of argument stemmed from an outdated 1970s doctrine in which few imagined the expansive abilities of wireless technology and the data that could be collected from it. The Government claims to have broken no laws but that they simply asked to cellphone companies for certain information and they complied as it was there information to share.

Case Importance

This case is important not just for this man or this instance but for how we should handle digital privacy. Imagine the information stored through Facebook through our profiles and our messengers. Or how much is stored in our emails or computer presence. Even things like our music preferences and online shopping habits our tracked through apps and websites. Imagine all this information freely traded and shared throughout the world and even with our government. That is exactly what Facebook got themselves in trouble doing handing out troves of user information to third parties that in turn was used for purposes of manipulation of the populous. By ruling that our cellphone data is subject to the Fourth Amendment the Supreme Court showed precedent in that what we do electronically is subject to the same rights and laws as any of our other properties and in such demands a warrant to be seized.

Supreme Courts roll

For a case to be heard by the Supreme Court there is a timely process and when those steps are exhausted the Supreme Court has the choice of whether the case is worth hearing. In the case of Carpenter V. United States this journey began in the criminal courts and ended in conviction and then moved to the Appeals Court in the 6th circuit. This began in 2015 and took until 2017 to be accepted into the Supreme Court. The decision was reached a whole year later in

2018 and ruled in favor of Carpenter that his Fourth Amendment right was violated and therefore his conviction was not just. The Supreme Court unlike all other courts has the power to pass judgement without a jury. Through the constitution the formerly known Article III courts or Constitutional Courts were given judicial power which allowed them to pass judgement on this case and siding with the rights given to the people of the United States grants through the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Conclusion

Without the Supreme Court doing its part in the American Judicial system cases like this would never reach the verdict intended by our founding fathers. The impartialness of this court with not having political ties or having to run a campaign they are free to make clear and precise judgments. Carpenter would have been convicted for wrongdoings he may or may not have done but the fact that his rights were violated unlawfully by the very institution sworn to uphold the law. Whenever our country is at crisis with the constitution and rights, we have a court set up just for the purpose of ensuring that our rights as a people and government are being respected and honored.

References

Wessler, N. F. (2018). The Supreme Court's Groundbreaking Privacy Victory for the Digital Age. Retrieved from https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/location-tracking/supreme-courts-groundbreaking-privacy-victory-digital-age

America's Founding Documents(n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript#toc-the-u-s-bill-of-rights