The use of real-time cell tower records by law enforcement to track a suspect's location doesn't constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is the second federal appellate court to weigh in on whether law enforcement officials must show probable cause to get rolling access to records kept by mobile service providers that can be used to approximate location based on cell tower signals. The Sixth Circuit—the only other court to take up the issue so far—held that obtaining prospective cell site data is not a search for Fourth Amendment purposes in 2012, in U.S. v. Skinner, 09-6497. 

“When criminals use modern technological devices to carry out criminal acts and to reduce the possibility of detection, they can hardly complain when the police take advantage of the inherent characteristics of those very devices to catch them,” wrote Fifth Circuit Judge Edith Brown Clement, quoting from the earlier Sixth Circuit decision.