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Note: Appeals court rules law enforcement agencies don't need a warrant to "ping" and track prepaid cellphone locations.
Prepaid cellphone users may be tracked by law enforcement agencies at any time, without police first having to obtain a probable-cause warrant.
That's one takeaway from a 23-page ruling issued Tuesday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The ruling centers around a case involving Melvin Skinner, who was convicted by a jury of drug trafficking and money laundering for his role in what the court described as "a large-scale drug-trafficking operation."
Skinner was busted after law enforcement agents "pinged" his location, tracking him using cellphone towers. "The government used data emanating from Melvin Skinner's pay-as-you-go cell phone to determine its real-time location. This information was used to establish Skinner's location as he transported drugs along public thoroughfares between Arizona and Tennessee," said U.S. Circuit Judge John M. Rogers in his opinion, which was written for the majority. "As a result of tracking the cell phone, DEA agents located Skinner and his son at a rest stop near Abilene, Texas, with a motorhome filled with over 1,100 pounds of marijuana."
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