Supreme Court Rules Geofence Warrants Require Constitutional Privacy Protections

In a landmark 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that geofence warrants — which force tech companies to hand over location data on everyone near a crime scene — constitute a 'search' under the Fourth Amendment, requiring probable cause and a warrant.

Key Takeaways

In a landmark 6-3 decision, the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled that geofence warrants — which force tech companies to hand over location data on everyone near a crime scene — constitute a 'search' under the Fourth Amendment, requiring probable cause and a warrant.

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday delivered a landmark 6-3 ruling limiting law enforcement use of geofence warrants, finding that an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in their cell-phone location information. The decision is likely to have broad ramifications for digital privacy rights and police surveillance across the United States.

Geofence warrants allow police to force tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Uber, and Yahoo to search their vast banks of user location data and identify every device present at a specific location and time — effectively letting investigators "search first and develop suspicions later." Critics have long argued these "reverse" warrants are unconstitutional because they sweep in data from innocent bystanders.

The Supreme Court agreed that the Fourth Amendment applies to this location data, meaning authorities must now obtain a search warrant — based on probable cause — before demanding geofence data from tech companies. The court ruled that simply using a phone does not constitute "willingly sharing" location data with a company, a distinction that prevents the third-party doctrine from applying.

The case centered on Okello Chatrie v. United States. Chatrie was convicted of bank robbery using evidence obtained via a geofence warrant, and his lawyers argued the warrant was unconstitutional. The court stopped short of banning geofence warrants altogether, but ruled they must be properly narrowed and supported by probable cause.

The ruling was not expected to change Chatrie's sentence since lower courts had already ruled the evidence was collected in good faith. The Supreme Court referred the question of whether the specific warrant in Chatrie's case showed probable cause back to the Appeals Court.

Some companies, notably Google, have already begun storing user location data on-device rather than on their servers to make it harder to comply with such requests. Monday's decision adds additional legal protection for the millions of Americans whose phones constantly record their movements.