The state should require police to get a search warrant before putting a GPS device on a vehicle and should expand the warrant requirement to cover cellphone tracking, David McGuire, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut, told the state legislature's Judiciary Committee on Monday.
McGuire testified in support of House Bill 5587, which affirms the warrant requirement established in the 2012 Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Jones. In that case, the court ruled that Washington, D.C., police violated the Fourth Amendment when they tracked a suspect via a GPS device without a valid warrant.
"This bill recognizes that police must obtain a probable cause warrant before using a GPS device to track someone," McGuire said in his written testimony. "It is consistent and even more critical to extend the same Fourth Amendment protection when police track someone using cellphone data."
He pointed out that phones with GPS provide precise geolocational information and that even phones without that technology leave a trail of contact with cellphone towers as long as the phones are powered on. Yet an existing state law permits police to track people through their cellphones without a warrant as long as they show "a reasonable and articulable suspicion" that a crime has been or is being committed.
"This relaxed standard permits warrant-less cell phone tracking and is inconsistent with the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, the reasoning in Jones and the intent of House Bill 5587," McGuire wrote.
Reports show that police have obtained 13,516 ex-parte orders for warrant-less cellphone tracking in Connecticut since the law was passed in 2005.
March 24, 2014
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