THE nine justices of the Supreme Court are used to applying 18th-century principles to an America that would bewilder the constitution’s framers. Yet sometimes this is really hard. On November 29th the court considered how a 226-year-old rule, the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures, bears on one arrow in the government’s investigative quiver: tracking people’s movements via their mobile-phone signals. At least six justices seemed keen to widen the Fourth Amendment umbrella for the digital age, but no single way to do so emerged. “This is an open box”, a forlorn Justice Stephen Breyer said. “We know not where we go.”
The matter dates to 2011, when Timothy Carpenter was arrested for masterminding a string of armed robberies in Michigan and Ohio. The FBI built their case against Mr Carpenter on 127 days of mobile-tower data placing him near the scenes of the crimes. Under the Stored...Continue reading
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