Police will have a harder time tracking your past whereabouts thanks to a landmark ruling that extends privacy protections in the digital age. Citing the Fourth Amendment, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Wednesday that obtaining phone records from your carrier without a search warrant is unconstitutional. This is the first time a federal appeals court has ruled against the common practice of police departments to obtain cellphone location data with a court order, which has a lower standard than a search warrant. Authorities have routinely accessed this kind of data without warrants for years.
