(José Niño, Headline USA) Trump’s Justice Department might not be fighting for greater domestic surveillance powers after all—at least when it comes to cell tower data.
The DOJ on Thursday requested a 90-day stay of proceedings in a legal matter, in which a judge has ruled that the practice of obtaining extensive cell tower data, commonly referred to as “tower dumps,” was a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
In his original ruling, the presiding judge wrote, “The Government is essentially asking the Court to allow it access to an entire haystack because it may contain a needle…The Fourth Amendment does not permit law enforcement to rummage through troves of data and themselves determine the existence of probable cause to support the seizure of that data.”
The DOJ initially signaled that it would appeal the Feb. 21 decision, but its request for a 90-day delay suggests that the Trump administration is now having second thoughts.
Cell tower data collection, a controversial investigative method, involves law enforcement agencies obtaining information from all mobile devices connected to a particular cellular tower within a specified timeframe.
This approach, often implemented without a warrant, enables authorities to gather data from an extensive number of cell phones in a targeted area.
The scale of these operations can range from collecting details on hundreds of devices to potentially accessing information from hundreds of thousands of phones, depending on the location and duration of the data collection.
José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino
