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Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

Judge says tower dumps violate the 4th amendment, but will let the cops do it this one time, as a treat.

A judge in Nevada has ruled that “tower dumps”—the law enforcement practice of grabbing vast troves of private personal data from cell towers—is unconstitutional. But tower dumps are also a massive privacy violation that flies in the face of the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unlawful search and seizure. In 2018, the Supreme Court considered Carpenter v. United States, a case where the FBI used cell phone location data to investigate a series of robberies.

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