Supreme Court ruling guts government’s use of geofence warrants
The Supreme Court has significantly curtailed law enforcement's ability to use geofence warrants, which allow investigators to obtain location data on every device near a crime scene. The Court stopped short of declaring the practice unconstitutional outright, leaving some room for their continued use under certain conditions.
Why this matters: Geofence warrants work by treating everyone near a location as a potential suspect. Your phone pings a tower, gets swept into a criminal investigation, and you may never know. That has happened to real people who were simply nearby. This ruling puts real limits on that practice. But 'curtailed' is not the same as 'ended.' Law enforcement still has a path to use these warrants. The details of what remains permissible will matter enormously, and those details will get worked out in lower courts, away from public attention.
Who should care: Privacy officers · Cybersecurity
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