Former SCOTUS Judge Stevens Weighs In On Phone Data Collection
Speaking at Georgia State University Wednesday, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens weighed in on a controversial topic: the collection of telephone data.As heard on the radio
Stevens said the use and storage of phone data to identify callers does not violate the Constitution’s ban on unreasonable searches. He cited his decision in the 1979 case Smith v. Maryland, in which the court ruled the instillation of a pen register (a device that records all numbers called from a particular phone) was not a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
“The fact that a new device, such as an automobile or a cell phone, may generate routine activities or generate new rules that give the public and the police access to information that a user of that device may prefer not to disclose is not a sufficient justification for imposing a warrant requirement as a precondition to police access that information,” Stevens said.
“It is part of the price that society pays for the benefits that the new device creates.”
The National Security Agency’s controversial use of phone data to gather intelligence has sparked a number of legal challenges.
Stevens didn’t go so far as to comment on the NSA, but he did said limiting access to a database could pose problems for law enforcement.
“Restrictions on access to information in the database would impair its usefulness, and introduction of a probable cause requirement might well frustrate critical investigations of suspicious activity,” Stevens said.
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case challenging the constitutionality of the government’s data collection.
President Obama wants Congress to approve a plan to have telephone companies store that data, allowing the government to access it only through a judge’s approval.
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