Mobile Phone Data Collection in a Post-Carpenter World

Is the Government Searching My Mobile Phone?  The Collection of Cell-Site Location Information and other Mobile Phone Data in a Post-Carpenter World

Date: February 13, 2019

Time: 6:30 pm

Location: Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP
2112 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20037

Please RSVP here by noon on February 13. 

Mobile phones have become near extensions of our bodies.  We use them to read emails, manage our finances, check the news, video-chat with friends and family, scope out restaurants, and access a host of other services.  Many of these services rely on geo-location services that can pinpoint our locations so our phones can provide us with useful information.  But these services also create records of where people are at any given moment--records that also are very helpful in allowing criminal authorities to identify the location of people who committed criminal activities.  Should criminal enforcers have access to our cell phone location data without seeking a warrant?  Or is this type of information too private to obtain without a search warrant?  This past summer, the Supreme Court ruled in Carpenter v. United States that authorities need to get a warrant before collecting certain types of cellphone data.  

The Carpenter case raises novel and interesting questions about how far criminal authorities may go in seeking our location-based data from our cellphones without a warrant.  SABA-DC has invited a group of criminal law experts to discuss the Carpenter case and to explore the contours of the decision and its implications for future criminal enforcement in the fast-developing world of mobile technology.

Panelists

Vijay Shanker is Deputy Chief of the Appellate Section of the Department of Justice's Criminal Division. He has argued approximately 60 cases, including four en banc rehearings, in the federal courts of appeals. He previously served as Acting Deputy Chief of Staff of the Criminal Division. In that role, the third-highest position in the Division, he helped to oversee approximately 600 lawyers and 1,000 employees, manage an annual budget of approximately $600 million, and advise the Assistant Attorney General on a wide range of federal law enforcement priorities. Vijay graduated from Duke University and the University of Virginia School of Law and clerked on the Second Circuit in New York.

Maneka Sinha is Special Counsel to the Director at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia (PDS). She serves as senior adviser to the agency’s director on forensic science issues and lead’s PDS’s efforts to litigate issues involving forensic science evidence. She also represents indigent defendants charged with serious felonies in the District of Columbia. She served twice as an international fellow for the International Legal Foundation, where she trained public defenders in the West Bank and Nepal. She graduated from U.C. Berkeley and New York University School of Law.

Deepthy Kishore (moderator) is an attorney in the Appellate Section of the U.S. Department of Justice's Criminal Division, where she handles criminal cases in the federal courts of appeals.  She previously served as a trial attorney in the Civil Division's Federal Programs Branch, where she served as a lead counsel representing federal agencies and officials in the defense of significant lawsuits challenging Executive Branch policies and actions.  Deepthy graduated from Emory University School of Law, where she was the Editor-in-Chief of the Emory Law Journal, and she clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.