Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf
Page Number: 91

20 

CARPENTER v. UNITED STATES 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

tees “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, 
houses,  papers,  and  effects.”    (Emphasis  added.)  The 
Fourth Amendment does not confer rights with respect to
the  persons,  houses,  papers,  and  effects  of  others.    Its 
language makes clear that “Fourth Amendment rights are 
personal,” Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U. S. 128, 140 (1978), and 
as a result, this Court has long insisted that they “may not 
be  asserted  vicariously,”  id.,  at  133.    It  follows  that  a 
“person who is aggrieved . . . only through the introduction
of  damaging  evidence  secured  by  a  search  of  a  third  per-
son’s  premises  or  property  has  not  had  any  of  his  Fourth 
Amendment rights infringed.”  Id., at 134. 

In this case, as JUSTICE KENNEDY cogently explains, the
cell-site  records  obtained  by  the  Government  belong  to
Carpenter’s  cell  service  providers,  not  to  Carpenter.    See 
ante,  at  12–13.  Carpenter  did  not  create  the  cell-site
records.  Nor  did  he  have  possession  of  them;  at  all  rele-
vant  times,  they  were  kept  by  the  providers.    Once  Car-
penter subscribed to his provider’s service, he had no right 
to  prevent  the  company  from  creating  or  keeping  the 
information in its records.  Carpenter also had no right to 
demand that the providers destroy the records, no right to 
prevent  the  providers  from  destroying  the  records,  and,
indeed, no right to modify the records in any way whatso-
ever  (or  to  prevent  the  providers  from  modifying  the  rec-
ords).  Carpenter, in short, has no meaningful control over
the  cell-site  records,  which  are  created,  maintained,  al-
tered,  used,  and  eventually  destroyed  by  his  cell  service 
providers.

Carpenter  responds  by  pointing  to  a  provision  of  the
Telecommunications  Act  that  requires  a  provider  to  dis-
close cell-site records when a customer so requests.  See 47 
U. S. C. §222(c)(2).  But a statutory disclosure requirement
is hardly sufficient to give someone an ownership interest 
in  the  documents  that  must  be  copied  and  disclosed. 
Many statutes confer a right to obtain copies of documents