Even from the NSA?
Via NRO
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled today that police need a judicial warrant issued on probable cause to obtain cellular telephone location information (CSLI) records maintained by cellphone service providers. That information can be used to show that a person moved from place to place during a call, which can be highly relevant evidence in a criminal investigation. In Commonwealth v. Augustine, the case decided today, the state wants to use it against the defendant in a murder case.
The divided court (5-2) decided the case under Article 14 of the Massachusetts Constitution, not the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. As explained in my weekend column (on Senator Rand Paul’s lawsuit challenging the NSA metadata program on constitutional grounds), the Supreme Court held in Smith v. Maryland (1979) that the Fourth Amendment does not provide phone company customers with protection against the government’s acquisition without a warrant of phone usage records maintained by the phone company. There is no property interest in them (the Fourth Amendment is essentially about preventing government trespass on property – your person, house, papers and effects) and there is no “expectation of privacy” because you know when you use the phone that your service provider is maintaining records of that usage.