Retired U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice John Paul Stevens on Wednesday spoke to more than 500 lawyers, federal and state judges and law students in Atlanta, focusing on what he said were the limits of the Fourth Amendment’s application to the government collection of cellphone data.
Stevens said the government is entitled to collect information on who makes calls to whom without a warrant to combat terrorism. Car owners must display license plates, which in a sense impairs privacy, he said, but it’s so commonplace that no one would think to object to it. Cellphone data is in the same category, he said.
