Federal Cellphone Location Searches Can Evade NJ Privacy Test
Federal Cellphone Location Searches Can Evade NJ Privacy Test
Publish Date: 2026-07-01 11:47:00
Source Domain: news.bloomberglaw.com
Failing to meet New Jersey’s bar for constitutional searches of criminal defendants’ cellphone locations doesn’t upend a criminal conviction based on data shared from an out-of-state investigation, a state appeals court ruled Wednesday.
Federal officers working a gun trafficking case in Ohio weren’t held to New Jersey’s probable cause standard for the warrant the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives got in the Buckeye State. That independent federal investigation allowed for sharing information with New Jersey law enforcement without triggering the higher bar, the Superior Court Appellate Division ruled.
There “was sharing of information between two governmental agencies, …
