Bills would require police to get warrants for mobile phone location

In the 2012, U.S. v. Jones case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled police need a search warrant to physically attach a GPS device to a vehicle, but the court stopped short of requiring warrants for geolocation information from sources such as smartphones or OnStar systems.

The new bills cover all domestic law enforcement acquisitions of U.S. residents' geolocation information without their knowledge. The bills create criminal penalties for surreptitiously using an electronic device to track a person's movements and prohibit commercial service providers from sharing customers' geolocation information with outside entities without customer consent.  

The bills apply both to real-time tracking of a suspect's movements and to acquisition of records of past movements.

Groups voicing support for the GPS Act include the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans for Tax Reform's DigitalLiberty.net, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA).

The bills are "vital to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans and to set standards that give businesses certainty and citizens greater confidence in their privacy," CCIA President and CEO Ed Black said in an email. "Advancing geolocation technology has created a loophole in our outdated electronic privacy rules. Congress must fix this."