Legal Issues: Smart Phones and Cell Towers: Finding the Legal Limits

Abstract

Police procedural TV shows have introduced a generation of viewers to amazing crime-fighting technologies and technicians, that seem to be able to “identify the killer” with the smallest of clues. The rise of these kinds of shows have actually created a problem for criminal trial lawyers – both prosecutors and defense attorneys – through something called “The CSI Effect”, or the expectation by jurors that some amazing technology, whether it’s DNA, blood splatter, forensics, or computer tracking, will clearly – and in just an hour – identify the culprit.

One of the more popular of these on-screen technologies is that of cell phone tracking, where skilled scientists are able to access telephone company records to triangulate which cell phone towers were handling a particular call and pinpoint the person’s location. It not only makes for great television, but like a lot (but not all) of on-screen technologies, happens to have a real-word counterpart. It was at the center of the criminal case of Quartavious Davis, who was convicted of seven armed robberies in southern Florida over a 4 month period of 2010.

Keywords: Smart Phones, Privacy, Criminal Law, Geo-Location, Cell Towers