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In this episode, we dive into Carpenter v. United States, the case that forever changed digital privacy. Timothy Carpenter thought he was untouchable until his phone had other plans. When the FBI used his cell phone data to track his every move, Timothy found himself at the center of a legal battle that would reshape how law enforcement accesses your location data. But what about the real snitch? This episode tells the story of how a phone ended up in witness protection (well, sort of), and the impact this landmark Supreme Court case ruling continues to have today.
Interested in reading Carpenter v. United : use this link
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/585/16-402/case.pdf
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Timothy wasn't exactly a success story. By most standards, he was going nowhere fast, except maybe backwards. But he did have one thing going for him, a supposed talent for armed robbery. After a string of successful heist, Timothy started to think he was the next Jesse James. I mean, why not? He had a system, a plan, a crew, he was in, he was out. We can clean. But there is one problem with thinking you're an outlaw. Sooner or later, every outlaw gets caught. Timothy's downfall didn't come from a rat in his crew though. No John Ford shooting him in the back. This was something much closer, something much more personal. You see, Timothy didn't realize that he'd been carrying around his own snitch all along, his phone. That phone knew everything, every heist, every stop, every getaway. And just like a tattletale in a classroom, it quietly kept track of all his misadventures, waiting for the right moment to tell the teacher. So how did it happen? Well, the FBI didn't need to chase Timothy across state lines or track down his accomplices. All they needed was Timothy's cell phone records, specifically where he'd been at any given time. You see, cell towers, those things we all ignore, are constantly pinging your phone, tracking your every move. Every time Timothy made a call, his location was logged by a tower, and those breadcrumbs, they led straight to him. And where did they catch him? Get this, outside a T-Mobile store, it doesn't get much more poetic than that, right? The guy was taken down in the parking lot of the very company whose towers helped do him in. Can you hear me now? But the phone didn't give up that information easily. During the interrogation, the phone said, "Listen, I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't see anything. Timothy and I, we're tight. I'm not just going to sell him out like that. Come on now, we know you were there. You were with him every step of the way. You've been together for years, haven't you? All we're asking for is a little cooperation. Help us understand what went down. Hey, I'm not saying a word. You can't make me spill the beans. But really, you think you're going to get out of this clean? We've got towers all over Detroit. Want to know what they saw? They saw you, buddy. We know where you were. The towers never lie. So how about you start talking before this gets ugly?" All right, fine. You got me. I was there, okay? Every time Timothy pulled a job, I was right by his side. Every now, just don't make this any worse for me, all right? So it was August 29, 2010. Yeah, yeah, it was a radio shack in Detroit. Timothy and the crew pulled around around 2 p.m. They parked around the corner, just like always. Yeah, I was with them. They hit the store fast. I mean, five minutes tops. Then they hopped back in the car. No one saw them, or so they thought. But me? I was pinging towers the whole time, leaving a nice little trail behind. They took off down Cass Avenue, ducking into an alley. Yeah, I followed them. I tracked every turn. Timothy called one of his guys after the job. I logged it all. After his arrest, Timothy was sitting in a cold room waiting for his lawyer. He knew someone had flipped on him. Maybe it was one of the guys, maybe the lookout, whoever it was, they were going to pay. But when his lawyer finally walked in, Timothy wasn't prepared for what he was about to hear. All right, Timothy, I've got some news for you. You know who gave you up? Yeah, I knew it. Which one of them was it? Was it Marcus? I bet it was Marcus. He's been shifty ever since that last job. No, it wasn't Marcus. It wasn't any of them. Wait, what? None of them, then who? It was your phone. My what? My phone. You're telling me my phone's snitched. That's right. Your phone's location data, the FBI didn't need any of your crew to flip. They used your phone's records to track every move you made during those robberies. Every time you made a call or texted someone, it left a trail. Timothy sat there, staring at his lawyer, dumbfounded. He had been betrayed by something he carried with him every day. How could a phone be the one to snitch on him? So, so what does that mean? I'm done? I'm going away for good. No, not necessarily. See, I've been thinking. The FBI didn't get a warrant for that phone data. They just took it. That might be enough to get this thrown out. Wait, wait, what? You think that's going to work? It might. Here's the thing. We argue this violates your Fourth Amendment rights, unlawful search and seizure. If the government wants to use your phone's data against you, they should have gotten a warrant first. Timothy, we're taking this to court. July 5, 1934. One day after the nation celebrated its independence from tyranny, workers in San Francisco took to the streets, demanding a different kind of freedom. Tensions continued to build as their demands were ignored until there was only one possible outcome. Oh, fail. Open warfare rages through the streets of the city in 3,000 Union Pickett, battle 700 police. This wasn't a war of independence, no. This was something different, something American. Open us every week as we uncover the hidden stories behind America's most explosive riots, stories of struggle, resistance and the fight for justice. This is American riot. The Frisco strike riots coming soon. The case went to trial in the lower courts. At first, Timothy didn't have much luck. The government won at both the district and appeals court levels with the judges ruling that his phone's data wasn't protected by the Fourth Amendment. The government argued that Timothy had no expectation of privacy for his phone's location since the data was held by a third party, the phone company. But Timothy's team wasn't giving up. They appealed again. And finally, the case made its way to the Supreme Court. This was the big leagues. We'll hear argument this morning in case 16402 Carpenter v. United States, Mr. Westler. Thank you. Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court, an issue in this case is the government's warrantless collection of 127 days, petitioners' cell site location information, revealing his locations, movements and associations over a long period. The collection of this information is a search as it disturbs people's longstanding practical expectation that their longer-term movements in public and private spaces will remain private. So what is the rule that you want us to adopt in this case? The rule we seek is that longer-term periods or aggregations of cell site location information is a search and requires a warrant. The battle over phone privacy rights was intense. In a close 5-2-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in Timothy's favor. Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, argued that "I have the opinion of the Court in case 16402 Carpenter v. United States. Cell phones work by continuously scanning their environment, picking up signals from the nearest cell site. Cell sites are antennas, usually on towers, but sometimes on buildings, flag poles, even church steeples. If you have a smart phone or something similar, it taps into the wireless network several times a minute, whether you're using one of its features or not, so long as the power is on. Every time the phone connects to a cell site, it generates a time-stamped record known as cell site location information, or CSLI. CSLI will show that your phone, which usually means you, was near that cell site at a particular time, phone companies collect that information for their own purposes, currently retaining it for over five years. That means that anyone with access to CSLI can track your movements over a period of several years. Now in this case, the police suspected Timothy Carpenter of participating in the armed robbery of several radio shack and, ironically enough, T-Mobile stores. They knew his cell phone number and applied for court orders, but not search warrants, to get from his phone company the CSLI for the period during which the robberies took place. Altogether, the government was able to obtain some 13,000 location points cataloging Carpenter's movements over 127 days, more than 100 location points per day. Sure enough, the CSLI placed Carpenter, as the prosecutor told the jury, right where the robberies were at the exact time of the robberies. He was convicted and sentenced to over 100 years. The Fourth Amendment protects the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures. Our cases have said that its basic purpose is to safeguard the privacy and security of individuals against arbitrary invasions by government officials and to prevent two permeating police surveillance. Now there are two major issues that have to be addressed in applying the Fourth Amendment to CSLI. The first is, how can you say that your privacy is invaded by a record of where you've been in public? We think the answer is that there is a difference between where you are at any particular moment in public and a record of where you've been every day, every moment over several years. Now in the past, the government could track you at most for a few days with the great expenditure of resources, but with CSLI, our cell phones become like ankle monitors enabling near-perfect surveillance at nearly no expense. The government does not have to decide in advance that they want to track you. You can comb through the database of records and find out what you were doing years earlier. We think that allowing government access to these location records, which can reveal what one of our cases called the "privacies of life," enables all-encompensing government surveillance of the sort that troubled the drafters of the Fourth Amendment. Even though the records primarily reveal where you were in public, that does not mean that there is no privacy interest in the detailed chronicle of your movements over time. Now the government argues that you have no privacy interest in CSLI because it's not yours. It belongs to the phone company. Our cases have said, for example, that you have no privacy interest in your financial records if you've turned them over to your bank, and you have no privacy interest in the phone numbers you dial because you turn those over to the phone company to make a call. This is known as the third-party doctrine. It is an important principle, and we do not mean our decision today to undermine it as it has been applied. But CSLI is not just another business record. It's not just a phone number that you dialed. There's an enormous difference between such things and a comprehensive record of your movements over time, casually collected by phone companies. You think that your privacy interest in such a record compiled from -- compiled from the use of your phone is not defeated simply because the record is held by your phone company. An individual retains a reasonable expectation of privacy in the CSLI corresponding to his cell phone number, and law enforcement must generally get a warrant to access that information. This Court is obligated, as subtler and more far-reaching means of invading privacy have become available to the government to ensure that the progress of science does not erode Fourth Amendment protections. Here the progress of science has afforded law enforcement a powerful new tool to carry out its important responsibilities. At the same time, this tool risks government encroachment of the sort the framers after consulting the lessons of history drafted the Fourth Amendment to prevent. We declined to grant the State unrestricted access to a wireless carrier's database of physical location information, in light of the deeply revealing nature of CSLI, its depth, breadth, and comprehensive reach, and the inescapable and automatic nature of its collection, the fact that such information is gathered by a third party does not make it any less deserving of Fourth Amendment protection. The government's acquisition of the cell site records here was a search under that amendment. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. But not everyone agreed. In a passionate dissent, Justice Kennedy wrote, "By using a cell phone, carpenter voluntarily shared his location with a third party service provider. Under the third party doctrine, the government may obtain this information without a warrant. The majority's decision will have broad consequences limiting law enforcement's ability to effectively combat crime in the digital age." Justice Thomas in his dissent wrote, "The Fourth Amendment, as originally understood, protects only persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches. The use of cell phone site records does not qualify. The majority's decision stretches the Fourth Amendment beyond its historical meaning." So what happened to Timothy? Well, he didn't walk free after the Supreme Court ruling. His sentence remained, and he's still serving time for the armed robberies, but his case changed the law. That much is clear. As for the phone? Well, it didn't go to prison. You could say it cooperated with authorities a little too well. More has it, the phone is in witness protection now. New number, new plan, maybe even a new ringtone. After all, you just can't go back to regular life after snitching on your owner in a Supreme Court case. Word on the street is that the FBI gave it a nice little retirement plan. A couple of burner phones for company, maybe even an upgrade to 5G. But whatever it is, you can bet one thing, it's still listening, quietly watching, just waiting for the next time, it's called to testify. Pamela Harris is running for president. But is she black, Indian, or, could she even be white? In America, the definition of race has been a moving target, shifting with the political winds and legal rulings. And no case in history illustrates the absurdity of this better than Plessy versus Ferguson. Homer Plessy wanted to be white, but according to the Supreme Court, all it took was one drop of black blood to seal his fate. In the next episode, we'll dive deep into the Court's bizarre racial math and explore how these legal definitions have shaped our society and continue to impact political figures like Pamela Harris today. Thank you for listening to Hidden Vertics. Be sure to subscribe, share with your friends, and leave a review. I'm Jeff, and I will see you next time as we uncover more verdicts that continue to shape the world in which we live. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] (upbeat music)
