GoKawiilThe 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 issue
The 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 be investigated later if they were near a crime at the time it happened.
In this case, Google provided police with a 2-hour window of location data that included, in part, location information for people sitting in a church near the bank who wouldn't be considered suspects or witnesses in the bank robbery.
"Anonymity is somewhat illusory because one's movements within the geofence often functions as a kind of fingerprint," Unikowsky said. "You can figure out who the person is based on a fairly small amount of movements."
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