Court: No search warrant needed for cell tower information

DETROIT (AP) — An appeals court says there's no right to privacy in records that show the location of towers used to complete cellphone calls.

The court ruled Wednesday in the case of two men convicted of a series of armed robberies in the Detroit area. The evidence included records from phone companies that showed the men used their phones 2 miles or less from the robbery sites.

Timothy Carpenter and Timothy Sanders say the records were obtained without a search warrant, a violation of the Fourth Amendment. But the federal appeals court disagreed, saying the content of calls may be private but not the technical information necessary to get calls from “point A to point B.”