Carpenter v. U.S., 138 [Link].

2206 (2018)
201 [Link].2d 507, 86 USLW 4491, 18 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 6081...

The precision of this information depends on the size of

the geographic area covered by the cell site. The greater
138 [Link]. 2206
Supreme Court of the United States the concentration of cell sites, the smaller the coverage
area. As data usage from cell phones has increased, *2212
Timothy Ivory CARPENTER, Petitioner wireless carriers have installed more cell sites to handle
v. the traffic. That has led to increasingly compact coverage
United States. areas, especially in urban areas.

No. 16–402. Wireless carriers collect and store CSLI for their own
| business purposes, including finding weak spots in their
Argued Nov. 29, 2017. network and applying “roaming” charges when another
| carrier routes data through their cell sites. In addition,
Decided June 22, 2018. wireless carriers often sell aggregated location records to
data brokers, without individual identifying information
of the sort at issue here. While carriers have long retained
CSLI for the start and end of incoming calls, in recent
Chief Justice ROBERTS delivered the opinion of the years phone companies have also collected location
Court. information from the transmission of text messages and
routine data connections. Accordingly, modern cell
phones generate increasingly vast amounts of increasingly
This case presents the question whether the Government precise CSLI.
conducts a search under the Fourth Amendment when it
accesses historical cell phone records that provide a
comprehensive chronicle of the user’s past movements.
B

In 2011, police officers arrested four men suspected of

I robbing a series of Radio Shack and (ironically enough)
T–Mobile stores in Detroit. One of the men confessed
that, over the previous four months, the group (along with
a rotating cast of getaway drivers and lookouts) had
A robbed nine different stores in Michigan and Ohio. The
suspect identified 15 accomplices who had participated in
There are 396 million cell phone service accounts in the the heists and gave the FBI some of their cell phone
United States—for a Nation of 326 million people. Cell numbers; the FBI then reviewed his call records to
phones perform their wide and growing variety of identify additional numbers that he had called around the
functions by connecting to a set of radio antennas called time of the robberies.
“cell sites.” Although cell sites are usually mounted on a
tower, they can also be found on light posts, flagpoles, Based on that information, the prosecutors applied for
church steeples, or the sides of buildings. Cell sites court orders under the Stored Communications Act to
typically have several directional antennas that divide the obtain cell phone records for petitioner Timothy
covered area into sectors. Carpenter and several other suspects. That statute, as
amended in 1994, permits the Government to compel the
Cell phones continuously scan their environment looking disclosure of certain telecommunications records when it
for the best signal, which generally comes from the “offers specific and articulable facts showing that there
closest cell site. Most modern devices, such as are reasonable grounds to believe” that the records sought
smartphones, tap into the wireless network several times a “are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal
minute whenever their signal is on, even if the owner is investigation.” 18 U.S.C. § 2703(d). Federal Magistrate
not using one of the phone’s features. Each time the Judges issued two orders directing Carpenter’s wireless
phone connects to a cell site, it generates a time-stamped carriers—MetroPCS and Sprint—to disclose “cell/site
record known as cell-site location information (CSLI). sector [information] for [Carpenter’s] telephone[ ] at call
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origination and at call termination for incoming and We granted certiorari. 582 U.S. ––––, 137 [Link]. 2211, 198
outgoing calls” during the four-month period when the [Link].2d 657 (2017).
string of robberies occurred. App. to Pet. for Cert. 60a,
72a. The first order sought 152 days of cell-site records
from MetroPCS, which produced records spanning 127
days. The second order requested seven days of CSLI II
from Sprint, which produced two days of records
covering the period when Carpenter’s phone was
“roaming” in northeastern Ohio. Altogether the
Government obtained 12,898 location points cataloging A
Carpenter’s movements—an average of 101 data points
per day. The Fourth Amendment protects “[t]he right of the
people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
Carpenter was charged with six counts of robbery and an effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” The
additional six counts of carrying a firearm during a “basic purpose of this Amendment,” our cases have
federal crime of violence. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 924(c), recognized, “is to safeguard the privacy and security of
1951(a). Prior to trial, Carpenter moved to suppress the individuals against arbitrary invasions by governmental
cell-site data provided by the wireless carriers. He argued officials.” Camara v. Municipal Court of City and County
that the Government’s seizure of the records violated the of San Francisco, 387 U.S. 523, 528, 87 [Link]. 1727, 18
Fourth Amendment because they had been obtained [Link].2d 930 (1967). The Founding generation crafted the
without a warrant supported by probable cause. The Fourth Amendment as a “response to the reviled ‘general
District Court denied the motion. App. to Pet. for Cert. warrants’ and ‘writs of assistance’ of the colonial era,
38a–39a. which allowed British officers to rummage through
homes in an unrestrained search for evidence of criminal
At trial, seven of Carpenter’s confederates pegged him as activity.” Riley v. California, 573 U.S. ––––, ––––, 134
the leader of the operation. In addition, FBI agent [Link]. 2473, 2494, 189 [Link].2d 430 (2014). In fact, as
Christopher Hess offered expert testimony about the John Adams recalled, the patriot James Otis’s 1761
cell-site data. Hess explained that each time a cell phone speech condemning writs of assistance was “the first act
taps into the wireless network, the carrier logs a of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain” and
time-stamped record of the cell site and particular sector helped spark the Revolution itself. Id., at –––– – ––––,
that were used. With this information, *2213 Hess 134 [Link]., at 2494 (quoting 10 Works of John Adams 248
produced maps that placed Carpenter’s phone near four of (C. Adams ed. 1856)).
the charged robberies. In the Government’s view, the
location records clinched the case: They confirmed that [section omitted]
Carpenter was “right where the ... robbery was at the
exact time of the robbery.” App. 131 (closing argument).
Carpenter was convicted on all but one of the firearm
counts and sentenced to more than 100 years in prison. B

The case before us involves the Government’s acquisition

The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed. 819
of wireless carrier cell-site records revealing the location
F.3d 880 (2016). The court held that Carpenter lacked a
of Carpenter’s cell phone whenever it made or received
reasonable expectation of privacy in the location
calls. This sort of digital data—personal location
information collected by the FBI because he had shared information maintained by a third party—does not fit
that information with his wireless carriers. Given that cell
neatly under existing precedents. Instead, requests for
phone users voluntarily convey cell-site data to their
cell-site records lie at the intersection of two lines of
carriers as “a means of establishing communication,” the
cases, both of which inform *2215 our understanding of
court concluded that the resulting business records are not
the privacy interests at stake.
entitled to Fourth Amendment protection. Id., at 888
(quoting Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 741, 99 [Link]. The first set of cases addresses a person’s expectation of
2577, 61 [Link].2d 220 (1979)).
privacy in his physical location and movements. In United
States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276, 103 [Link]. 1081, 75

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[Link].2d 55 (1983), we considered the Government’s use movements were disclosed to the public at large. Id., at
of a “beeper” to aid in tracking a vehicle through traffic. 430, 132 [Link]. 945 (opinion of Alito, J.); id., at 415, 132
Police officers in that case planted a beeper in a container [Link]. 945 (opinion of Sotomayor, J.).2
of chloroform before it was purchased by one of Knotts’s
co-conspirators. The officers (with intermittent aerial *2216 In a second set of decisions, the Court has drawn
assistance) then followed the automobile carrying the a line between what a person keeps to himself and what
container from Minneapolis to Knotts’s cabin in he shares with others. We have previously held that “a
Wisconsin, relying on the beeper’s signal to help keep the person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in
vehicle in view. The Court concluded that the information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.”
“augment[ed]” visual surveillance did not constitute a Smith, 442 U.S., at 743–744, 99 [Link]. 2577. That remains
search because “[a] person traveling in an automobile on true “even if the information is revealed on the
public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of assumption that it will be used only for a limited
privacy in his movements from one place to another.” Id., purpose.” United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435, 443, 96
at 281, 282, 103 [Link]. 1081. Since the movements of the [Link]. 1619, 48 [Link].2d 71 (1976). As a result, the
vehicle and its final destination had been “voluntarily Government is typically free to obtain such information
conveyed to anyone who wanted to look,” Knotts could from the recipient without triggering Fourth Amendment
not assert a privacy interest in the information obtained. protections.
Id., at 281, 103 [Link]. 1081.
This third-party doctrine largely traces its roots to Miller.
This Court in Knotts, however, was careful to distinguish While investigating Miller for tax evasion, the
between the rudimentary tracking facilitated by the beeper Government subpoenaed his banks, seeking several
and more sweeping modes of surveillance. The Court months of canceled checks, deposit slips, and monthly
emphasized the “limited use which the government made statements. The Court rejected a Fourth Amendment
of the signals from this particular beeper” during a challenge to the records collection. For one, Miller could
discrete “automotive journey.” Id., at 284, 285, 103 [Link]. “assert neither ownership nor possession” of the
1081. Significantly, the Court reserved the question documents; they were “business records of the banks.”
whether “different constitutional principles may be Id., at 440, 96 [Link]. 1619. For another, the nature of those
applicable” if “twenty-four hour surveillance of any records confirmed Miller’s limited expectation of privacy,
citizen of this country [were] possible.” Id., at 283–284, because the checks were “not confidential
103 [Link]. 1081. communications but negotiable instruments to be used in
commercial transactions,” and the bank statements
Three decades later, the Court considered more contained information “exposed to [bank] employees in
sophisticated surveillance of the sort envisioned in Knotts the ordinary course of business.” Id., at 442, 96 [Link].
and found that different principles did indeed apply. In 1619. The Court thus concluded that Miller had “take[n]
United States v. Jones, FBI agents installed a GPS the risk, in revealing his affairs to another, that the
tracking device on Jones’s vehicle and remotely information [would] be conveyed by that person to the
monitored the vehicle’s movements for 28 days. The Government.” Id., at 443, 96 [Link]. 1619.
Court decided the case based on the Government’s
physical trespass of the vehicle. 565 U.S., at 404–405, Three years later, Smith applied the same principles in the
132 [Link]. 945. At the same time, five Justices agreed that context of information conveyed to a telephone company.
related privacy concerns would be raised by, for example, The Court ruled that the Government’s use of a pen
“surreptitiously activating a stolen vehicle detection register—a device that recorded the outgoing phone
system” in Jones’s car to track Jones himself, or numbers dialed on a landline telephone—was not a
conducting GPS tracking of his cell phone. Id., at 426, search. Noting the pen register’s “limited capabilities,”
428, 132 [Link]. 945 (ALITO, J., concurring in judgment); the Court “doubt[ed] that people in general entertain any
id., at 415, 132 [Link]. 945 (SOTOMAYOR, J., actual expectation of privacy in the numbers they dial.”
concurring). Since GPS monitoring of a vehicle tracks 442 U.S., at 742, 99 [Link]. 2577. Telephone subscribers
“every movement” a person makes in that vehicle, the know, after all, that the numbers are used by the telephone
concurring Justices concluded that “longer term GPS company “for a variety of legitimate business purposes,”
monitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on including routing calls. Id., at 743, 99 [Link]. 2577. And at
expectations of privacy”—regardless whether those any rate, the Court explained, such an expectation “is not

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one that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable.” protection by venturing into the public sphere. To the
Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). When Smith contrary, “what [one] seeks to preserve as private, even in
placed a call, he “voluntarily conveyed” the dialed an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally
numbers to the phone company by “expos[ing] that protected.” Katz, 389 U.S., at 351–352, 88 [Link]. 507. A
information to its equipment in the ordinary course of majority of this Court has already recognized that
business.” Id., at 744, 99 [Link]. 2577 (internal quotation individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in
marks omitted). Once again, we held that the defendant the whole of their physical movements. Jones, 565 U.S.,
“assumed the risk” that the company’s records “would be at 430, 132 [Link]. 945 (ALITO, J., concurring in
divulged to police.” Id., at 745, 99 [Link]. 2577. judgment); id., at 415, 132 [Link]. 945 (SOTOMAYOR, J.,
concurring). Prior to the digital age, law enforcement
might have pursued a suspect for a brief stretch, but doing
so “for any extended period of time was difficult and
III costly and therefore rarely undertaken.” Id., at 429, 132
[Link]. 945 (opinion of Alito, J.). For that reason, “society’s
The question we confront today is how to apply the
expectation has been that law enforcement agents and
Fourth Amendment to a new phenomenon: the ability to
others would not—and indeed, in the main, simply could
chronicle a person’s past movements through the record
not—secretly monitor and catalogue every single
of his cell phone signals. Such tracking partakes of many
movement of an individual’s car for a very long period.”
of the qualities of the GPS monitoring we considered in
Id., at 430, 132 [Link]. 945.
Jones. Much like GPS tracking of a vehicle, cell phone
location information is detailed, encyclopedic, and
Allowing government access to cell-site records
effortlessly compiled.
contravenes that expectation. Although such records are
generated for commercial purposes, that distinction does
At the same time, the fact that the individual continuously
not negate Carpenter’s anticipation of privacy in his
reveals his location to his wireless carrier implicates the
physical location. Mapping a cell phone’s location over
third-party principle of Smith and Miller. But while the
the course of 127 days provides an all-encompassing
third-party doctrine applies to telephone numbers and
record of the holder’s whereabouts. As with GPS
bank records, it is not clear whether its logic extends to
information, the time-stamped data provides an intimate
the qualitatively different category of cell-site *2217
window into a person’s life, revealing not only his
records. After all, when Smith was decided in 1979, few
particular movements, but through them his “familial,
could have imagined a society in which a phone goes
political, professional, religious, and sexual associations.”
wherever its owner goes, conveying to the wireless carrier
Id., at 415, 132 [Link]. 945 (opinion of SOTOMAYOR, J.).
not just dialed digits, but a detailed and comprehensive
These location records “hold for many Americans the
record of the person’s movements.
‘privacies of life.’ ” Riley, 573 U.S., at ––––, 134 [Link]., at
2494–2495 (quoting Boyd, 116 U.S., at 630, 6 [Link]. 524).
We decline to extend Smith and Miller to cover these
And like GPS monitoring, cell phone *2218 tracking is
novel circumstances. Given the unique nature of cell
remarkably easy, cheap, and efficient compared to
phone location records, the fact that the information is
traditional investigative tools. With just the click of a
held by a third party does not by itself overcome the
button, the Government can access each carrier’s deep
user’s claim to Fourth Amendment protection. Whether
repository of historical location information at practically
the Government employs its own surveillance technology
no expense.
as in Jones or leverages the technology of a wireless
carrier, we hold that an individual maintains a legitimate
In fact, historical cell-site records present even greater
expectation of privacy in the record of his physical
privacy concerns than the GPS monitoring of a vehicle we
movements as captured through CSLI. The location
considered in Jones. Unlike the bugged container in
information obtained from Carpenter’s wireless carriers
Knotts or the car in Jones, a cell phone—almost a “feature
was the product of a search.3
of human anatomy,” Riley, 573 U.S., at ––––, 134 [Link].,
at 2484—tracks nearly exactly the movements of its
owner. While individuals regularly leave their vehicles,
A they compulsively carry cell phones with them all the
time. A cell phone faithfully follows its owner beyond
A person does not surrender all Fourth Amendment
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public thoroughfares and into private residences, doctor’s information, deduce a detailed log of Carpenter’s
offices, political headquarters, and other potentially movements, including when he was at the site of the
revealing locales. See id., at ––––, 134 [Link]., at 2490 robberies. And the Government thought the CSLI
(noting that “nearly three-quarters of smart phone users accurate enough to highlight it during the closing
report being within five feet of their phones most of the argument of his trial. App. 131.
time, with 12% admitting that they even use their phones
in the shower”); contrast Cardwell v. Lewis, 417 U.S. 583, At any rate, the rule the Court adopts “must take account
590, 94 [Link]. 2464, 41 [Link].2d 325 (1974) (plurality of more sophisticated systems that are already in use or in
opinion) (“A car has little capacity for escaping public development.” *2219 Kyllo, 533 U.S., at 36, 121 [Link].
scrutiny.”). Accordingly, when the Government tracks the 2038. While the records in this case reflect the state of
location of a cell phone it achieves near perfect technology at the start of the decade, the accuracy of
surveillance, as if it had attached an ankle monitor to the CSLI is rapidly approaching GPS-level precision. As the
phone’s user. number of cell sites has proliferated, the geographic area
covered by each cell sector has shrunk, particularly in
Moreover, the retrospective quality of the data here gives urban areas. In addition, with new technology measuring
police access to a category of information otherwise the time and angle of signals hitting their towers, wireless
unknowable. In the past, attempts to reconstruct a carriers already have the capability to pinpoint a phone’s
person’s movements were limited by a dearth of records location within 50 meters. Brief for Electronic Frontier
and the frailties of recollection. With access to CSLI, the Foundation et al. as Amici Curiae 12 (describing
Government can now travel back in time to retrace a triangulation methods that estimate a device’s location
person’s whereabouts, subject only to the retention inside a given cell sector).
polices of the wireless carriers, which currently maintain
records for up to five years. Critically, because location Accordingly, when the Government accessed CSLI from
information is continually logged for all of the 400 the wireless carriers, it invaded Carpenter’s reasonable
million devices in the United States—not just those expectation of privacy in the whole of his physical
belonging to persons who might happen to come under movements.
investigation—this newfound tracking capacity runs \
against everyone. Unlike with the GPS device in Jones, [section omitted]
police need not even know in advance whether they want
to follow a particular individual, or when.

Whoever the suspect turns out to be, he has effectively IV

been tailed every moment of every day for five years, and
Having found that the acquisition of Carpenter’s CSLI
the police may—in the Government’s view—call upon
was a search, we also conclude that the Government must
the results of that surveillance without regard to the
generally obtain a warrant supported by probable cause
constraints of the Fourth Amendment. Only the few
before acquiring such records. Although the “ultimate
without cell phones could escape this tireless and absolute
measure of the constitutionality of a governmental search
surveillance.
is ‘reasonableness,’ ” our cases establish that warrantless
searches are typically unreasonable where “a search is
The Government and Justice KENNEDY contend,
undertaken by law enforcement officials to discover
however, that the collection of CSLI should be permitted
evidence of criminal wrongdoing.” Vernonia School Dist.
because the data is less precise than GPS information. Not
47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 652–653, 115 [Link]. 2386, 132
to worry, they maintain, because the location records did
[Link].2d 564 (1995). Thus, “[i]n the absence of a warrant,
“not on their own suffice to place [Carpenter] at the crime
a search is reasonable only if it falls within a specific
scene”; they placed him within a wedge-shaped sector
exception to the warrant requirement.” Riley, 573 U.S., at
ranging from one-eighth to four square miles. Brief for
––––, 134 [Link]., at 2482.
United States 24; see post, at 2232 - 2233. Yet the Court
has already rejected the proposition that “inference
[Government must generally obtain a search warrant
insulates a search.” Kyllo, 533 U.S., at 36, 121 [Link]. 2038.
supported by probable cause before acquiring CSLI from
From the 127 days of location data it received, the
a wireless carrier.]
Government could, in combination with other

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As Justice Brandeis explained in his famous dissent, the

Court is obligated—as “[s]ubtler and more far-reaching
means of invading privacy have become available to the
Government”—to ensure that the “progress of science”
does not erode Fourth Amendment protections. Olmstead
v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 473–474, 48 [Link]. 564, 72
[Link]. 944 (1928). Here the progress of science has
afforded law enforcement a powerful new tool to carry
out its important responsibilities. At the same time, this
tool risks Government encroachment of the sort the
Framers, “after consulting the lessons of history,” drafted
the Fourth Amendment to prevent. Di Re, 332 U.S., at
595, 68 [Link]. 222.

We decline to grant the state unrestricted access to a

wireless carrier’s database of physical location
information. In light of the deeply revealing nature of
CSLI, its depth, breadth, and comprehensive reach, and
the inescapable and automatic nature of its collection, 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 that Amendment.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the

case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with
this opinion.

It is so ordered.

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