Cops can’t do cell tower mass surveillance ‘dumps,’ court rules

A federal judge in Nevada has ruled that it’s unconstitutional to obtain swaths of cellular records through “tower dumps” — but will still let police get away with using it as evidence, as reported earlier by 404 Media and Court Watch.

With tower dumps, authorities can dig through the cell records that pinged off a particular tower during a specific time. Though police may be looking for just one record, these dumps often expose the data of thousands of people, making it a major privacy concern. In a 2010 case involving the High Country Bandits, for example, officers caught the two bank robbers by looking through a tower dump containing more than 150,000 phone numbers.

In the ruling, Judge Miranda Du said that searching through these records violates the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. However, Du denies a motion to suppress using these records as evidence because the court seems to be the first “within the Ninth Circuit to reach this conclusion and the good faith exception applies.”

As noted in the filing, the tower dump exposed the data of 1,686 users, but the records helped authorities build their case against Nevada man Cory Spurlock, who faces charges related to a murder-for-hire conspiracy and conspiracy to distribute marijuana. In February, a federal judge in Mississippi similarly deemed tower dumps unconstitutional, preventing FBI officials from pulling information from cell towers spanning nine locations and four carriers, as reported by Court Watch. The Department of Justice has since appealed the decision.