Massachusetts Court Rules Cell Tracking Requires Warrant—Sometimes

v. Estabrook Monday. Attorneys for Adam Bradley and Jason Estabrook argued that law enforcement shouldn't have been able to search or seize their phone records without first obtaining a warrant (see 1505070048). Arguing on behalf of the commonwealth, Jamie Michael Charles said because law enforcement knew the time of the murder they believed Bradley and Estabrook committed, they collected two weeks' worth of cellphone information but searched only a six-hour time frame around the time of the murder, so a warrant wasn’t needed. The American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation have written amicus briefs asking the court to close the six-hours-or-less loophole in the state’s warrant requirements for cellphones as authorized under Commonwealth v. Augustine (see 1504270048). The court partially agreed with the ACLU and EFF, saying the commonwealth’s request of two weeks of CSLI violates the state constitution, even if just six hours' worth of CSLI is used during a trial. In a blog post Monday, EFF Staff Attorney Andrew Crocker applauded that part of the court’s opinion, saying, “Too often law enforcement and intelligence agencies successfully argue that they should be able to access large amounts of private information as long as they only use a smaller amount.” However, Crocker expressed concern with the court’s decision not to end the six-hour loophole authorized in Augustine as well as the court’s decision to add a footnote in its opinion saying the exception to the warrant requirement for CSLI applies only to phone call CSLI and not registration CSLI. “Why should you have more protection when you walk around playing Words with Friends than when you actually exchange some words with a friend over the phone,” Crocker said.