Appeals court to hear cell phone tracking case

A federal appeals court in Pennsylvania is scheduled to hear arguments Friday over whether the federal government has the right to obtain information about the location of an individual's cell phone without showing probable cause that the information would reveal evidence of a crime.

A magistrate judge denied the government's November 2007 request and a district court upheld that decision in September 2008. The government appealed that decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia.

The American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the court urging that the district court's decision be upheld. They argued that district courts must require the government to show probable cause before permitting the government to obtain information about the location of a cell phone.

"Congress set a sliding scale for access to information covered by the [Stored Communications Act] and thus provided a statutory 'safety-valve' to judges faced with requests for information that is or may be protected by the Fourth Amendment, allowing them to avoid issuing an order that may violate the Fourth Amendment or call the statute's constitutionality into question," the brief argued.