US EditionSupreme Court seems inclined to allow police to use geofence warrants to identify criminal suspects
Justices appeared divided over whether police can use broad location-data searches to identify suspects when investigators have few other leads.
- On Monday, the Supreme Court heard arguments over whether police use of "geofence" warrants to obtain cellphone location data near crime scenes violates the Fourth Amendment in the case of Okello Chatrie, who pleaded guilty to a 2019 Midlothian, Virginia credit union robbery.
- Authorities turned to a court-approved geofence warrant after exhausting leads in the 2019 robbery of The Call Federal Credit Union, compelling Alphabet's Google to search location data for devices within a 150-meter radius of the crime scene.
- Justice Sonia Sotomayor questioned defense lawyer Adam Unikowsky's argument that geofence warrants are too broad, saying the process "identifies a place, a crime, a timeframe." The justices appeared inclined to allow the practice with potential scope limitations.
- Broader legal battles surround "reverse keyword" warrants, which police use to identify users searching specific terms like "pipe bomb," as courts wrestle with how 18th-century constitutional protections apply to modern digital-age surveillance technology.
- A ruling expected by the end of June will determine if police can continue using location-based digital warrants nationwide, though a victory for Chatrie may not change his conviction because the trial judge allowed evidence under a "good faith" exception.
46 Articles
46 Articles
The Death of Anonymity? SCOTUS Poised to Approve Broad Digital Location Searches
The Supreme Court on Monday seemed inclined to rule that police could use geofence warrants that collect the location history of cellphone users to find people near crime scenes. The justices heard nearly two hours of arguments in an appeal from Okello Chatrie, who pleaded guilty to robbing a bank in a suburb of Richmond, […]
Privacy and law enforcement clash as the Supreme Court wrestles with 'geofence' warrants
The U.S. Supreme Court seemed divided Monday on the question of geofencing, a relatively new and powerful tool that allows police to tap into giant tech databases in order to find out who was in the vicinity of a crime scene.In this case, the crime was an unsolved bank robbery that was ultimately solved by tapping into Google’s database to determine the identities of people who were near the bank in the two hours before and after the heist. Alth…
SUPREME COURT WEIGHS LAWFULNESS OF 'GEOFENCE' WARRANTS
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on Monday over whether law enforcement's use of a "geofence" warrant to nab data from cellphones near the scene of a Virginia armed robbery violated the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment bar on…
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