News Analysis
In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision that police officers had acted illegally in collecting months of cell phone data from a private company, without a warrant, to track the movements of a robbery suspect. 
The Court majority opinion stated that “in light of the deeply revealing nature of CSLI [cell site location information] … 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 the Amendment.” 
The Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protects Americans against government searches unless there is probable cause of a crime and a court-issued search warrant….