Kerr on the Fourth Amendment and Cell Phone Location Warrants

Robert Chesney
Monday, August 8, 2011, 10:32 PM
Orin Kerr is always worth reading, above all on Fourth Amendment issues.  He has a very interesting piece up tonight on a recent decision by a magistrate judge weighing in on the question of whether the police may obtain a warrant requiring a cell phone company to provide cell phone location information for a person who is subject to an existing arrest warrant.  It's not a national security case, and nothing in it (so far as I can tell

Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Brookings

Orin Kerr is always worth reading, above all on Fourth Amendment issues.  He has a very interesting piece up tonight on a recent decision by a magistrate judge weighing in on the question of whether the police may obtain a warrant requiring a cell phone company to provide cell phone location information for a person who is subject to an existing arrest warrant.  It's not a national security case, and nothing in it (so far as I can tell from Orin's account) purports to address how the same issue would arise in an intelligence investigation rather than a run-of-the-mill criminal investigation.  But it's easy to see how the issue could arise in a criminal investigation with national security overtones, and hence deserves mention here.

Robert (Bobby) Chesney is the Dean of the University of Texas School of Law, where he also holds the James A. Baker III Chair in the Rule of Law and World Affairs at UT. He is known internationally for his scholarship relating both to cybersecurity and national security. He is a co-founder of Lawfare, the nation’s leading online source for analysis of national security legal issues, and he co-hosts the popular show The National Security Law Podcast.

Subscribe to Lawfare