March 30, 2021
[Cross-posted from What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law]
By Elizabeth Joh
On Jan. 6, a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to stop the certification of the presidential election results. Many of the insurrectionists will be tracked down and charged with crimes, in part, because their cell phones placed them in the Capitol building during the attack.
The case of Carpenter v. United States is the closest the Supreme Court has come to weighing in on the matter of historical cell phone data, but the decision didn’t offer an opinion on law enforcement’s use of a location-specific cell phone tower data dump without an individual suspect in mind. This brings up questions about the way warrants usually work under the Fourth Amendment. Listen to episode 51 of What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law.
