SJC Rules On Phone Data Searches

In September of 2004, the body of a woman named Julaine Jules was recovered from the Charles River. She'd been missing since August. The police suspected her one-time boyfriend, Shabbaz Augustine, and they later obtained call logs from his cell phone that showed where he'd been over a two-week period.

Augustine was arrested in 2011 and charged with Jules’ murder. It was not an unusual murder case, but it has led to a landmark ruling issued by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court yesterday. The SJC ruled that from now on, in most cases, a warrant will be needed before getting a phone’s location records.

Jessie Rossman, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.