You're presupposing there's a valid argument for the other side. The text of the fourth amendment clearly connects the scope of privacy to property rights:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Cell location data belongs to AT&T and Verizon, not the accused individual. As to such third-party data, there's a general principle rooted in Roman law that third parties can be compelled to provide documents in their possession to aid a court proceeding: https://commerciallore.com/2015/06/04/a-brief-history-of-sub... ("In an early incarnation of mandatory minimum sentencing there were only two offences that automatically attracted the death penalty, treason and failing to answer a subpoena. Subpoenas as a tool of justice were considered so important that failing to answer it was a most egregious violation of civic duty. A person accused of murder may or may not be guilty, but if a person refused to answer a subpoena then they were seen as denying Jupiter’s justice itself.").

Those principles were incorporated into what's called the third-party doctrine half a century ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine. But by then it was already an ancient principle.

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dataflow 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> You're presupposing there's a valid argument for the other side.

How about this part of the amendment?

> "The right of the people to be secure in their persons against unreasonable searches shall not be violated"

Isn't treating people like suspects (investigating them, searching their belongings, tracking them, etc.) merely because a third party claimed (and of course GPS is never inaccurate) that they passed within some vague proximity of a crime scene a violation of their security in their persons? Do you really have reasonable suspicion that every individual among the dozens (or more) you dragged into your search may have committed a crime if it's clear the others are there for unrelated reasons?

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rayiner 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Treating people like potential suspects isn't a "search" of their "persons" (bodies), "houses, papers, and effects." How would it even work if police needed a warrant to even consider someone as a suspect and investigate them?

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32 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

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dataflow 26 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

You understand "being secure in your person" is not merely "I don't get physically touched", right? If I stalked you every day without ever touching you, you wouldn't feel so secure in your person, would you? If I was a police officer, you still wouldn't feel so secure, would you? If you knew I was doing this remotely instead of in-person, by monitoring you over video cameras across the city and tracking all your moves with your own GPS devices, you surely wouldn't feel so secure, would you?

People (maybe not you, but most humans) feel threatened when all their moves are being tracked. There's an implicit threat of physical harm even if it hasn't occurred thus far. Not to mention there's also the risk of a bad actor (read: including law enforcement insider) stealing your tracking data that was supposedly only ever being used for good. It's a real threat to your security, and you have a right to be secure. If another person is going to threaten a free person's security, they sure as hell need both the legal authority and reasonable suspicion of a crime. That is the amendment.

Where to draw the line for "reasonable" here can vary somewhat, but I think most people would agree that if you have 3 people all in close proximity to a crime, you could justify having reasonable suspicion of each individual of being involved. If you have a hundred people walking in a half-mile radius, you clearly don't. Idk where the line exactly is, and circumstances can affect things, but somewhere between those seems like a reasonable place to start.

	▲	rayiner 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		[delayed]

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triceratops 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Well this court has never overturned decisions made 50 years ago.

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cosmicgadget 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> You're presupposing there's a valid argument for the other side.

Typically a good presupposition when the Supreme Court decides to hear the case.

Cell tower info isn't at issue here.

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superkuh 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Ah, you're a bit confused about the case the court is hearing. This is explcitly not about telco basestation records. It is about the records for location data recorded on the smart phones of individuals. GPS recorded on their personal property, not multi-lateration from telco owned third party property. It's all very accessible if you give it a listen. It's streaming live on youtube.

	▲	rayiner 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I haven't heard the argument so maybe it's getting into that. But my understanding--based on a few articles--is that the case is (at least partly?) about geofencing information stored on Google's servers. E.g. https://www.npr.org/2026/04/27/nx-s1-5777656/supreme-court-g... "But after two months of working the case, all leads had gone dry. So police applied for a geofence warrant directed at Google and all its collected and stored cellphone location information. A state magistrate judge found probable cause to issue the warrant and authorized the disclosure of Google's location information for an area the size of about three football fields around the Midlothian bank at the time of the robbery."
	▲	unethical_ban 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		This is not about local storage. It's about location data gathered from apps and phone OS operators, which is much more akin to telco records than confiscating everyone's phone to look for evidence.

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kmeisthax 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you take the 4th Amendment to specifically and solely bar inconveniencing property owners without a warrant, then you are arguing that the 4th Amendment is a water sandwich. When the 4th Amendment was actually written, it was not actually possible for the investigative powers of the state to not inconvenience a property holder. But we've been able to violate people's right to privacy without them even knowing for almost a century now.

Furthermore, the last major SCOTUS case regarding this issue[0] had some very interesting dissenting opinions specifically on the question of "Does the 4th Amendment only guarantee property rights". Justice Thomas made the exact same argument you made. Justice Gorsuch took your argument and twisted it inside out. He specifically argued that because the 4th Amendment is a protection on property, the third-party doctrine should be thrown out entirely, and that you should still own your personal information even if you have to lend it to a phone company in order for them to connect you.

So yes, there are valid arguments for the other side, even in the "4A only protects property" regime.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_v._United_States

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JumpCrisscross 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> there's a general principle rooted in Roman law

There goes my fucking morning :P