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Supreme Court Weighs Arguments Over How Police Request Location ... - CNET
"Geofence warrants," sometimes known as reverse location searches, are increasingly controversial for sweeping up information on any device that happened to be in the vicinity of a crime. Omar Gallaga 4 min read The way police seek location information and data from tech companies to investigate crimes is under a microscope at the highest US court, in a closely watched case with broad implications for data privacy and law enforcement.After about 2 hours of oral arguments in a case involving geofence warrants and Google, however, it was unclear whether the Supreme Court would take any action that could shift interpretations of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits the government from conducting "unreasonable searches and seizures."The hearing Monday before the court was for Chatrie v. United States, which centers on a 2019 bank robbery in Richmond, Virginia, where $195,000 was stolen. When the case had gone cold, police obtained a geofence warrant from Google, granting law enforcement access to location data from and around the bank. Using the data, police were able to narrow the list of potential suspects in the area from 19 to three, eventually arresting Okello T. Chatrie, the plaintiff in the case. Geofence warrants are often described as "digital dragnets" by critics because they can ensnare innocent bystanders near a crime scene. Here's how it works. If there are no clear suspects for a crime, law enforcement can serve a warrant to a tech giant requesting location data. Police draw a circle on a map around a crime scene and specify a time window. The tech company (most frequently Google) searches its database for devices inside that "fence" during that time. The police can then ask the company for the specific account details -- such as email addresses, phone numbers and usernames -- of anyone who appears to be acting suspiciously.A constitutional issueThe arguments on Monday largely focused on whether geofence warrants themselves are constitutionally problematic and whether location data should be treated the same as other types of data, such as emails or photos stored on the cloud. Much discussion centered on whether the Fourth Amendment applied at all if a person could simply turn off location tracking. Adam Unikowsky, lawyer for the plaintiff, argued that because even anonymized location data can be used to identity someone, especially within the confines of a geofence, those who use services like Google Maps may not even be aware that they could b...
US supreme court hears whether smartphone location data warrants ...
The US supreme court is considering whether sprawling warrants for smartphone location data infringe on Americans’ privacy rights and violate the constitution.Justices heard opening arguments in Chatrie v United States on Monday that concerned law enforcement’s reliance on so-called “geofence warrants” in difficult cases. The case was originally brought by Okello Chatrie, whose phone location data helped police in Richmond, Virginia, track him down after he robbed a bank at gunpoint and escaped with $195,000 in 2019. Chatrie pleaded guilty to armed robbery and was sentenced to 12 years in prison, but his lawyers argue none of the evidence against him should have been admissible in court.A lawyer for the US Department of Justice argued that nearly any actions taken in public while in possession of a smartphone afforded no expectation of privacy.“An individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in movements that anyone could see, that he has opted to allow a third party to analyze for its own purposes,” the US solicitor general, a high-ranking lawyer for the Trump administration, has argued in legal filings.Law enforcement is increasingly demanding that tech companies hand over sensitive phone location data on people at or near a site where a suspected crime occurred – anyone who falls within the radius of a virtual “fence”. These geofence warrants, rather than specifying their targets, instead compel tech companies to hand over data to police or the FBI on every electronic device in a particular place at a given time.Privacy advocates and some legal experts view geofence searches as a dragnet that sweeps up innocent bystanders. “Just because you have a cellphone, should you be subjected to all sorts of law enforcement investigations because of crimes that may have happened in your vicinity?” said Paul Ohm, a law professor at Georgetown University, who submitted an amicus brief in the case. These warrants can lead to an individual’s phone location data being shared with the police simply because they “were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or even worse – you weren’t, but your phone thought you were”, Ohm added.Law enforcement officers and prosecutors say these geofence warrants help them solve crimes after reaching dead ends. Justice Brett Kavanaugh expressed concerns about “the practical consequences of not being able to solve murders”.Chatrie had turned on an optional Google “location history” feature that documented his location every few minut...
US Supreme Court weighs privacy implications of geofence warrants
The U.S. Supreme Court appeared divided while weighing the constitutionality of geofence warrants to allow law enforcement agencies to request technology companies to identify devices located within a specific geographic area.
Supreme Court weighs geofence warrants in landmark privacy case - MSN
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on whether police use of geofence warrants—digital searches of location data near crime scenes—violates Fourth Amendment protections. Justices appeared ...
