The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday about the constitutionality of “geofence warrants,” a tool that allows law enforcement to determine what cellphones were in a specific area when a crime occurred.
The investigatory technique, in which the police compel tech companies to hand over location data from countless cell phones in order to locate suspects or witnesses, has proven controversial.
Critics say these digital dragnets violate the Fourth Amendment’s restriction on unreasonable searches by gathering data on innocent individuals. Supporters of geofence warrants say the tool is necessary in the digital age to apprehend suspects and that cell phone users knowingly give up their location data to tech companies.
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The case so far
The debate involves Chatrie v. United States, a case involving the armed robbery of a Virginia credit union in 2019. Okello Chatrie was convicted and sentenced to nearly 12 years in prison after law enforcement issued a geofence warrant to Google to determine what cell phones were near the scene of the crime.
The warrant successfully sought all location data for cell phones in a 17.5-acre area surrounding the credit union during a two-hour time frame. The district court in Chatrie’s case agreed that the geofence warrant did not meet the Fourth Amendment’s probable cause requirement, but allowed the evidence to be used under the good-faith exception — meaning that the police believed they were acting lawfully.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling, but Chatrie’s lawyers continue to argue the evidence should be excluded. In their petition to the Supreme Court, the lawyers argued that geofence warrants are no different than the general warrants historically used to carry out broad and abusive searches without probable cause.
“The Fourth Amendment was born of the Founders’ revulsion for general warrants and writs of assistance — instruments that allowed the government to search first and develop suspicions later,” the petition said.
What each side is saying
In a brief supporting Chatrie at the Supreme Court, the Center for Democracy and Technology also pushed back against the use of geofence warrants.
“Permitting this warrant could usher in a broad new class of so-called ‘reverse searches’ and digital dragnets where not only our actions and associations, but our very curiosities and thoughts are vulnerable to government surveillance without individualized suspicion,” the organization said. “These modern-day general warrants are incompatible with the Fourth Amendment, threaten an unprecedented chilling effect, and would unravel the balance between the government and its citizens that sets the foundation for democratic society.”
While opponents say geofence warrants target hundreds and thousands of people, supporters of the tool say that only one target was involved in the search: Google. Speaking on behalf of the Trump administration and more than 30 states that support the use of geofence warrants, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued to the Supreme Court that Chatrie “took no steps to protect his location from disclosure, such as pausing the Location History feature he had enabled or adjusting, deactivating, or forgoing his cell phone during his crime.”
Google already made changes
Regardless of the outcome, Google announced in 2023 that it would begin allowing users to store their location data on their devices rather than on the company’s servers. Although Google didn’t specifically mention geofence warrants, the move was seen as an effort to defang the tool and force law enforcement to issue warrants for individual devices.
While Google has been the primary target of geofence warrants, critics say that law enforcement has also targeted other tech companies, such as Apple, Microsoft and Yahoo.
The Supreme Court is expected to make a decision on the issue by the end of June.
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