Last night, a legal brief was filed in which several well-known technology companies asked the Supreme Court to consider the privacy implications of warrant-less law enforcement access to cellphone location data.
Just recently, the court agreed to hear the case Carpenter v. United States, which revolves around whether law enforcement can obtain electronic location information without having a warrant, if that information is held by a third party. There is no doubt that this case will be watched closely, as the court’s decision could cause massive overtones for privacy in the digital age.
The legal brief was signed by the following companies: Facebook (NASDAQ:$FB), Apple (NASDAQ:$AAPL), Google (NASDAQ:$GOOGL), Airbnb, and Dropbox. All of the companies in question said “they believe the Court should refine the application of certain Fourth Amendment doctrines to ensure that the law realistically engages with Internet-based technologies and with people’s expectations of privacy in their digital data.”
Most of these companies believe that some interpretations of the law “are not sustainable” in the modern world. In the legal brief, the tech companies wrote that the courts should take “a more flexible approach that realistically reflects the privacy people expect in today’s digital environment.”
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