At stake in Supreme Court: privacy in the digital age
In more ways than one, Timothy Carpenter has been demonstrating the importance of smartphones in modern-day life.
Seven years ago, he began organizing and committing a series of armed robberies of cellphone stores in Michigan and Ohio. On Wednesday, he will be arguing to the United States Supreme Court that the privacy of historical location data collected by cell towers should be protected by the Constitution. If the justices agree, it will be the first time the Constitution’s privacy protections have been updated since the internet was invented. As digital technology becomes increasingly necessary for day-to-day activities, the outcome of this case could help determine how private those activities are.
“For every advance in technology, the [high] court has had an opportunity to weigh in on the effect of the new technology on privacy,” says Alex Abdo, a senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “This
Pre-internet privacy lawsSlippery slopes'They need to be more aware'
