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Speaker 1: Now it's time for our daily Bloomberg Law Brief, exploring

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Speaker 1: legal issues in the news, and Today, Bloomberg lawho stun

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Speaker 1: Grosso discusses why more than a dozen US technology companies

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Speaker 1: are calling on the Supreme Court to make it harder

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Speaker 1: for government agencies and officials to access individual cell phone data.

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Speaker 1: She speaks at Georgia Newhouse, a partner at Denton's, and

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Speaker 1: Scott Vernick, a partner at Fox Rothschild. George tell us

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Speaker 1: a little about the criminal case here so that we

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Speaker 1: can put this in context. The case arises from an

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Speaker 1: appeal by a guy named Timothy Carpenter who is convicted

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Speaker 1: in robbing a series of stores in Maryland and Ohio,

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Speaker 1: and federal prosecutors in that case, and this is usually

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Speaker 1: the situation in these cases. You have to prove that

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Speaker 1: was the defendant who committed the robberies, and they did

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Speaker 1: that in part by placing him near the site of

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Speaker 1: various robberies using cell phone location information, which is basically

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Speaker 1: your with our mobile phones are mobile providers and know

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Speaker 1: at all time it is exactly where we are because

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Speaker 1: there is a cell phone tower that is picking up

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Speaker 1: your signal. That information does not convey of course what

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Speaker 1: was discussed over the phone. UH. Typically federal prosecutors obtained

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Speaker 1: State prosecutors obtain that information by way of a subpoena,

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Speaker 1: which is to say, they issue a grand jury subpoena

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Speaker 1: that requires not even probable cause, simply a reasonable belief

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Speaker 1: that there might be relevant information. And that information, of

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Speaker 1: course and helped convict Mr Carpenter. So he is now

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Speaker 1: claiming that that was a search under the Fourth Amendment.

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Speaker 1: And if it's a search, it wasn't supported by a warrant,

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Speaker 1: even questionable whether there was probable cause. So it is

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Speaker 1: yet another interesting application of novel technology to the Fourth Amendment.

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Speaker 1: And Scott, what's the government's argument for not requiring a

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Speaker 1: warrant in the case like this? Well, I think the

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Speaker 1: government has sort of at least one principal argument, and

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Speaker 1: that is that under a doctrine beviously adopted by the

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Speaker 1: Supreme Court UH in a case called Smith, the view

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Speaker 1: is that the information that consumers give up to their

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Speaker 1: cell phone companies UH and by extension, the cell phone

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Speaker 1: towers is sort of voluntarily given up UH. And it's

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Speaker 1: sort of a voluntarily disclosed business record. UH. And because

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Speaker 1: of the quote unquote voluntary nature. There's no reasonable expectation

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Speaker 1: of privacy expected in the record that the phone companies have,

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Speaker 1: and therefore there's no need to have any Fourth Amendment

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Speaker 1: protection around it. That's good for Nick, a partner at

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Speaker 1: Fox Rothschild, and at George Newhouse, a partner at Denton,

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Speaker 1: speaking with Bloomberg Law host during Grosso. You can listen

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Speaker 1: to Bloomberg Law weekdays at one pm Wall Street Time

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Speaker 1: here on Bloomberg Radio, and that's this morning's Bloomberg Law Brief.

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Speaker 1: You can find more legal news at Bloomberg Law dot

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Speaker 1: com and Bloomberg Vina dot com. Attorneys will find exceptional

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Speaker 1: legal research and business developed tools there as well. Visit

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Speaker 1: Bloomberglaw dot com and Bloomberg b Anda dot com for

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Speaker 1: more information.