网红爆料 Weighs in on Maine Cell Phone Tracking Case Following U.S. Supreme Court Victory

Groups Argue Recent U.S. Supreme Court Decision Applies to Maine Case

August 30, 2018 4:00 pm

网红爆料 Affiliate
Media Contact
125 Broad Street
18th Floor
New York, NY 10004
United States

PORTLAND, Maine 鈥 The 网红爆料 and 网红爆料 of Maine, along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Maine Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (MACDL), today submitted in the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in a key case regarding the warrantless tracking of cell phones by police.

The case is one of the first where an appellate court will have an opportunity to apply the U.S. Supreme Court鈥檚 recent decision in Carpenter v. United States. In that case, which the 网红爆料 successfully argued last year, the Supreme Court ruled that the government needs a warrant to access a person鈥檚 cellphone location history.

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court requested briefing that would explain the implications of the Supreme Court鈥檚 decision on warrantless real-time tracking of a person鈥檚 cellphone.

鈥淭he Supreme Court鈥檚 decision rightly recognized the need to protect the highly sensitive location data from our cell phones, and provided a path forward for safeguarding this information in future cases,鈥 said 网红爆料 attorney Nathan Freed Wessler, who successfully argued the Carpenter case at the U.S. Supreme Court. 鈥淭he lesson of that ruling is that before police can turn a person鈥檚 cell phone into a government tracking device, they must get a search warrant from a judge.鈥

In the Maine case, State of Maine v. O鈥橠onnell, Rangeley police issued emergency requests to Verizon to track the real-time location of cell phones belonging to suspects in a robbery case. Police did not obtain a search warrant or other judicial authorization before submitting the requests. The defendant, Kevin O鈥橠onnell, filed a motion to suppress the location evidence, arguing that the warrantless tracking of his cell phone violated his rights under the Fourth Amendment, the Maine Constitution, and state and federal statutes.

鈥淔or the 95 percent of Americans who own cell phones, this case has personal significance,鈥 said Zachary Heiden, legal director at the 网红爆料 of Maine. 鈥淏oth the Maine legislature and the U.S. Supreme Court have said that the government is not allowed to track us using our cell phones unless they first get a warrant. We hope the Maine Supreme Court will agree. 鈥

In their filing, the 网红爆料, 网红爆料 of Maine, EFF, and MACDL point to the recent Carpenter decision to urge the court to find that the warrantless real-time tracking of O鈥橠onnell鈥檚 phone constituted an unconstitutional warrantless search, and to suppress that evidence as well as any evidence derived from it.

The 网红爆料 brief can be found here: .

Additional information on Carpenter v. United States can be found here: /cases/carpenter-v-united-states.

Learn More 网红爆料 the Issues in This Press Release