Cell-Phone Data Requires Warrant, MA Supreme Court Rules

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, 5-2, ruled this week that law enforcement may not a track a suspect's movements from cellphone data without getting a warrant, The Wall Street Journal reports. The court held, "'“even though restricted to telephone calls sent and received (answered or unanswered), the tracking of the defendant’s movements in the urban Boston area for two weeks was more than sufficient to intrude upon the defendant’s expectation of privacy,'" WSJ reported from the opinion. The court was applying the state constitution, not the federal constitution.