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The way police seek information and location data from technology companies to investigate crimes is under the microscope in the highest US court, in a closely watched case that has broad implications for data privacy and law enforcement.
After approx Two hours of oral arguments In a case involving geofencing orders and Google, it was unclear whether the Supreme Court would take any action that could change interpretations of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits the government from conducting “unreasonable searches and seizures.”
The hearing was held on Monday before the court Chatri v. United Stateswhich centers around a 2019 bank robbery in Richmond, Virginia, in which $195,000 was stolen. When the case went cold, the police got a… Geofencing command From Google, giving 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 District 19 to three, and eventually arrested Okello T. Chatri, the plaintiff in the case.
Geofencing orders are often described by critics as “digital nets” because they can trap innocent bystanders near a crime scene.
Here’s how it works. If there are no obvious suspects in a crime, law enforcement can submit a warrant to a tech giant requesting location data. The police draw a circle on a map around the crime scene and designate a time period. The technology company (most often Google) searches its database for devices that were within that “fence” during that period. Police can then ask the company for specific account details – such as email addresses, phone numbers and usernames – of anyone who appears to be acting suspiciously.
Constitutional issue
The arguments Monday focused largely on whether geofencing orders themselves pose a constitutional problem and whether location data should be treated like other types of data, such as emails or photos stored in the cloud. Much of the discussion has centered around whether the Fourth Amendment applies at all if a person can simply turn off location tracking.
Adam Yunikowski, plaintiff’s attorney. Argue so Since even anonymous location data can be used to identify someone, especially within the confines of a geofence, those using services like Google Maps may not even realize that they could be investigated later if they were near a crime at the time it occurred.
In this case, Google provided police with a two-hour location data window that included, in part, location information for people sitting in a church near the bank who could not be considered suspects or witnesses in the bank robbery.
“Anonymity is somewhat illusory because a person’s movements within a geofence often serve as a kind of fingerprint,” Yunikowski said. “You can tell who a person is based on a fairly small amount of movements.”
The justices grappled with comparisons between the location’s technology and how Google stores it, and with physical-world scenarios involving safe deposit boxes or storage units that police might search with a warrant.
Some of these concerns form the basis for the argument that geofencing orders could violate the Fourth Amendment. Normally, police must show probable cause a person committed a crime before they can search their data. A geofencing warrant is broad in nature, giving law enforcement access to the data of hundreds of innocent people, such as nearby residents or shoppers, to find a single suspect.
A spokesperson for the Electronic Privacy Information Center said that Chatri v. United States is important because it examines how freely the government can use location services to identify a suspect. said Alan Butler, CEO and President of EPIC In a statement That geofence searches are “an incredibly invasive investigative tactic that threatens the Fourth Amendment rights of hundreds of millions of individuals.”
Butler went on to say, “The court must hold that the Constitution protects our digital data even when it is stored by an app or cloud provider. The court must ensure that the highly sensitive records generated by our phones cannot be obtained without special suspicion and close judicial oversight.”
What’s next for geofencing orders?
The Supreme Court has few options as it hears the case. It could rule that geofencing orders should be more specific about what law enforcement is seeking, rather than casting a wide net and seeing what comes up. Or it could provide an opinion that speaks more broadly about what law enforcement can and cannot ask for in warrants seeking data from tech companies, which could have significant implications beyond just location data.
It can also maintain the status quo by refusing to rule on the case.
A Justice Department lawyer argued that location data should be distinguished from more sensitive data, noting that it represents “general movements” that can be observed by others, making it fundamentally different from “the contents of an individual’s personal thoughts.” He noted that a ruling that modifies how arrest warrants seek data could have wide-ranging implications for law enforcement, making it more difficult to access evidence such as surveillance footage.
Justice Samuel Alito explicitly told the government that the court should not write a “thesis” about the Fourth Amendment in the digital age. He has resisted pressure for a broad ruling that might inadvertently affect other tools, such as emails, calendars or tower logs — a common police tactic by which they identify every phone connected to a particular cell tower at a specific time.
Alito also noted that because Google moved location data from its site Sensorvolt servers For devices in recent years, the issue of geolocation commands may be moot in some cases.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor suggested that for such orders to be constitutional, there must be a “reasonable likelihood” of finding evidence at each stage of the process, and that judges should provide stricter oversight of how law enforcement narrows the list of targets.
“There’s value in us defining the parameters of this process, right?” she said.