Supreme Court Rules Geofence Warrants Require Fourth Amendment Protection

This ruling limits how law enforcement can use broad digital dragnet warrants to identify suspects, requiring them to respect individual privacy rights regarding cell phone location tracking.

• •The Supreme Court held that police acquisition of Google Location History data constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment.
• •Individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their cell phone location information.
• •The Court rejected the government's argument that short-term monitoring of location data falls outside Fourth Amendment protections.
• •Location History data is more precise than cell-site location information (CSLI), pinpointing location within 20 meters and recording data every two minutes.
• •The Court compared Location History to private materials like emails and photos, noting users view it as a personal journal.
• •The ruling applies to geofence warrants, which allow police to request data for all devices within a specific geographic area during a set time frame.
• •The case originated from a 2019 credit union robbery in Midlothian, Virginia.
• •The police warrant process involved three steps: obtaining anonymized data for a geofence, narrowing the list, and finally obtaining identifying information for specific users.

Patterns POLISCOPE noticed across the record. These are observations to investigate, not conclusions.