US SC rules law enforcement needs warrant to search cellphone data
Washington, June 23 : The US Supreme Court has ruled that law enforcement in most cases has to obtain a warrant in order to search and seize long-term cell phone records that would show a person's location.
In a 5-4 ruling on Friday, the court held that the Fourth Amendment's protections against an unreasonable search protects people from having the government acquire their cell-site records from wireless providers in run-of-the-mill criminal investigations, reports The Hill magazine.
Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the court's four liberal justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, to make up the majority.
Justice Anthony Kennedy dissented along with conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.
The ruling marked a major win for privacy rights in the digital age.
The plaintiff in the case was Timothy Carpenter, who was arrested in April 2011 for several armed robberies in Detroit, reports Efe news.
Carpenter was sentenced to 116 years in prison, as he was considered to be the mastermind of a group of thieves and the person responsible for purchasing firearms for the group.
Prosecutors had asked Carpenter's wireless provider to hand over his cell phone records, which allowed them to follow his location during 127 days and determine that he was near the stores that were robbed.
The Supreme Court ruling, written by Chief Justice Roberts, sides with Carpenter and declines "to grant the state unrestricted access to a wireless carrier's database of physical location information".
According to the ruling, the government will generally need a warrant to obtain cell phone records, although some exceptions are possible, as when a suspect is on the run or is putting others in danger.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
