This case was at the Petition for Rehearing posture. Previously, the Third Circuit had held that the District Court properly denied the defendant’s motion to suppress his cell site location information (CSLI) because he had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his CSLI. The Third Circuit previously wrote that the government did not need probable cause to collect this data.
The Third Circuit started by stating that Carpenter sets forth a new rule that defendants do in fact have a privacy interest in their CSLI. The Government here acquired the defendant’s CSLI through a court order under the Stored Communications Act. The previous Third Circuit decision that upheld the District Court relied specifically on In re Application of the United States for an Order Directing a Provider of Electronic Communication Service to Disclose Records to the Government.
The Court in rehearing went without hesitation to the good faith exception, noting at some length that the purpose of the exclusionary rule is deterrence and that those purposes would not be served here.
The case is United States v. Goldstein, 914 F.3d 200, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS (3rd Cir.) January 22, 2019.