AsburyPark

The state of New Jersey wants the power to peek at your cellphone billing records without a search warrant. And they are going to court to get that authority, without regard to either the Fourth Amendment or individual privacy rights.

We hope the New Jersey Attorney General's Office will be rebuffed at every turn in a case that legal experts say will have statewide implications for individual privacy. The state needs to be reminded that justice can flourish only when the proper balance between one's constitutional rights and the government's need to know is struck. Its action here is a blatant overreach of power.

Later this month, a judge in Monmouth County will hear the case, which eventually will likely be decided by the state's top court. The case involves Gary Lunsford, a 24-year-old Asbury Park man who is facing cocaine distribution charges after being arrested with another man in May. The state is seeking billing and call-detail records that could give prosecutors evidence of contacts Lunsford made to use as evidence against him. The prosecutors are trying to do this without first getting a search warrant. They should be denied that opportunity.

The Attorney General's Office is challenging a state Supreme Court ruling that for decades has required law enforcement officers to first go to a judge to get a warrant before they can obtain an individual's telephone billing records during the course of a criminal investigation.

The state maintains that enabling law enforcement to obtain cellular telephone billing records by grand jury subpoena instead of a warrant would speed investigations by making necessary information available early on, long before investigators are able to uncover enough probable cause to obtain a warrant. Without probable cause, though, the state is able to engage in a mere fishing expedition.

STORY: Prosecutors seeking cellphone records without warrant

A 1982 state Supreme Court ruling in a case known as State vs. Hunt said that individuals have privacy interests in their telephone billing records that are protected by the New Jersey constitution, and that seizure of those records by law enforcement without a warrant "can pose significant dangers to political liberty."

It is hard to argue with that conclusion. Yet, the state contends it doesn't require a warrant to get what it needs; all it requires is a grand jury subpoena, since grand jury proceedings are secret. That very secrecy, though, would allow prosecutors to launch fishing expeditions and troll for information without cause.

Defense attorneys rightly argue that if the warrant requirement is eliminated, police could conceivably go after your telephone records without having any reason to believe you are involved in criminal activity. The state has no right to know who you are talking to, without first showing probable cause and getting a judge to sign a search warrant.

But the Attorney General's Office seems to believe that its convenience trumps the Fourth Amendment and the state constitution. It is time for the courts to send these overreaching prosecutors back to dry dock

and to defend New Jerseyans fundamental right to be protected from unlawful search and seizure by the state.