Justices to weigh cellphone privacy in landmark case

The privacy of emails, photos stored in the cloud, even heart rate history from a smartwatch could be at stake, according to civil libertarians, as the Supreme Court takes up a potential blockbuster case after Thanksgiving.

When they return to the bench after the holiday, the justices will weigh whether the history of cellphone locations stored by a phone service provider is searchable without a warrant. 

The case, Carpenter v. U.S., centers on Timothy Carpenter, who argues the government violated his Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure when it obtained his cellphone location records from MetroPCS and Sprint without a warrant. Authorities then used that data as trial evidence to convict him of a string of robberies at Radio Shack and T-Mobile stores in Michigan and Ohio from December 2010 to March 2011. 

The government argues that it was well within its rights under the Stored Communications Act of 1986 to get a court order for the records. The law allows this type of data to be searched if the government can show reasonable grounds to believe it will be relevant to a criminal investigation. To obtain a warrant, law enforcement officers, however, must show there is probable cause. 

Read more at The Hill