Legal Issues Pertaining to the Use of Cell Phone Data

This paper examines the principal legal issues related to the use of cell phone data as evidence at trial and to establish a basis for obtaining wiretap orders or call detail records from service providers. Four scenarios are considered. The first three scenarios explore evidentiary issues related to data extracted from damaged SIM cards, partial data recovered from memory chips and deleted data obtained from handsets. The fourth scenario, which focuses on the so-called “Trojan defense,” clarifies the important distinction between evidence admissibility and evidence sufficiency.