Today:  Supreme Court Rules Warrants Required for Cell Phone Location Data,  FCC Rural Health Care Funding, FTC DOJ Hart-Scott-Rodino Premerger Notification Rules 

Supreme Court Rules Warrants Required for Cell Phone Location Data

In a 5-4 decision, the US Supreme Court ruled that law enforcement agents must generally obtain a warrant supported by probable cause before they can obtain historical cell-site location information (CSLI).  The case involved whether the government violated the Fourth Amendment when law enforcement obtained more than four months' worth of historical CSLI data for serial robbery suspects.   The Court said, among other things:

“The question we confront today is how to apply the Fourth Amendment to a new  phenomenon: the ability to chronicle a person’s past movements through the record of his cell phone signals. Such tracking partakes of many of the qualities of the GPS monitoring we considered in Jones.  Much like GPS tracking of a vehicle, cell phone location information is detailed, encyclopedic, and effortlessly compiled.

 At the same time, the fact that the individual continuously reveals his location to his wireless carrier implicates the third-party principle of Smith and Miller. But while the third-party doctrine applies to telephone numbers and bank records, it is not clear whether its logic extends to the qualitatively different category of cell-site records….

 …Given the unique nature of cellphone location records, the fact that the information is held by a third party does not by itself overcome the user’s claim to Fourth Amendment protection. Whether the Government employs its own surveillance technology as in Jones or leverages the technology of a wireless carrier, we hold that an individual maintains a legitimate expectation of privacy in the record of his physical movements as captured through CSLI. The location information obtained from Carpenter’s wireless carriers was the product of a search.”

The Court went on to emphasize that:

“Our decision today is a narrow one. We do not express a view on matters not before us: real-time CSLI or “tower dumps” (a download of information on all the devices that connected to a particular cell site during a particular interval).  We do not disturb the application of Smith and Miller or call into question conventional surveillance techniques and tools, such as security cameras. Nor do we address other business records that might incidentally reveal location information. Further, our opinion does not consider other collection techniques involving foreign affairs or national security. As Justice Frankfurter noted when considering new innovations in airplanes and radios, the Court must tread carefully in such cases, to ensure that we do not “embarrass the future.”

FCC Rural Health Care Funding

The FCC released an Order increasing the annual cap on Rural Health Care (RHC) Program spending by nearly 43%, to $571 million, which will reverse across-the-board spending cuts for the current funding year imposed by the old cap.  These “pro-rata” cuts had created uncertainty and turmoil in the program for patients, health care providers, and communications companies alike. Looking ahead, the FCC will adjust the cap annually for inflation and allow funds unused from prior years to be carried forward.  At the same time, the FCC continues its work on enacting reforms proposed last year to guard against program waste, fraud, and abuse.

Program funding had been capped at $400 million since 1996.  However, funding requests for high-speed broadband from health care providers have outpaced the RHC Program funding cap, placing a strain on the Program’s ability to increase access to broadband for health care providers, particularly in rural areas, and foster the deployment of broadband health care networks. Further, rural health care providers face imminent financial hardship in funding year (FY) 2017 due to the significant, automatic proration of their funding requests pursuant to RHC Program rules.

FTC DOJ Hart-Scott-Rodino Premerger Notification Rules

The Federal Trade Commission, with the concurrence of the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, approved amendments to the Hart-Scott-Rodino Premerger Notification Rules and to the instructions for filling out the form that companies use to report a proposed merger, acquisition, or similar transaction under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act.  The Premerger Notification and Report Form (known also as the HSR Form) is designed to provide the FTC and the Antitrust Division of DOJ with the necessary information for an initial evaluation of the potential anticompetitive impact of proposed transactions.  The amendments simplify and clarify some language used in the Rules and the instructions, and they allow for the use of email in certain circumstances, such as in granting early termination. More information.

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 The Regulatory Mix, Inteserra’s daily blog of telecom related regulatory activities, is a snapshot of PUC, FCC, legislative, and occasionally court issues that our regulatory monitoring team uncovers each day. Depending on their significance, some items may be the subject of an Inteserra Briefing.