8 ms·

US Supreme Court reviews police use of cell location data

257 points by unethical_ban 6mo ago

https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/27/politics/geofencing-supreme-geofencing-cellphone-data https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/27/politics/geofencing-supreme-g...

mothballed 6mo ago
With parallel construction on the menu, this is largely academic. There is zero percent chance police and those who profit from their patronage will give up cell location sweeps.
- Detrytus 6mo ago
  You cannot do a parallel construction if the telecom operator refuses to share data with you in the first place. And if SCOTUS makes the right decision here they will have legal grounds to refuse.
  - mothballed 6mo ago
    Again, I hope your position here is something more than 'largely academic.' Optimistically it may be, history tells us AT&T Mobile, T-mobile, Verizon, etc (pretty much all the major carriers except perhaps Dish) have been caught selling data for a buck and have still only pledged not to sell to agreggators (not law enforcement). There is incontrovertible evidence major carriers are ready and willing, and indeed have sold this to patrons they can profit from. In theory your comment may be a rebuttal to the 'largely academic' assertion I made, in practice it's largely a distinction without much difference. Your rebuttal is a pretty remarkable, eccentric claim in the context of the vast majority of telcos that will share the data for a profit (as I put it, 'profit from the patronage [of the police]'). Whether the request comes in the form of a warrant -- again -- largely academic in such case. Your assertion requires some strong data to overcome the evidence to the contrary, if it is intended as a rebuttal. It's also worth noting illegally executed warrants don't stop you from getting the data. I've had cops force a hospital to search me before, then get the warrant actually signed after they did it. It didn't stop the hospital from executing the warrant, it just means they evidence couldn't be directly used against me. That's another lever they have, illegally execute a warrant, get the evidence they can't use in court, then parallel construction. Sure your lawyer can argue "the fruits of this warrant have to be tossed out" but it doesn't mean dick -- they already secretly used it to get other evidence that won't be tossed out.
superkuh 6mo ago
I've been listening to this live and it's clear how Kavenaugh will vote regardless of the validity of the arguments. His mind is set and he's well into coming up with barely related hypotheticals introducing exigency into a case where there was none (the geofencing request for spying on a large group of people was done a week after the crime occured).
- ceejayoz 6mo ago
  SCOTUS has been this way for a while now. They start with the desired decision and work backwards to justify it.
  - seanw444 6mo ago
    Or they refuse to hear cases that they know will go the way they don't want.
- rayiner 6mo ago
  You're presupposing there's a valid argument for the other side. The text of the fourth amendment clearly connects the scope of privacy to property rights: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." Cell location data belongs to AT&T and Verizon, not the accused individual. As to such third-party data, there's a general principle rooted in Roman law that third parties can be compelled to provide documents in their possession to aid a court proceeding: https://commerciallore.com/2015/06/04/a-brief-history-of-subpoenas/ https://commerciallore.com/2015/06/04/a-brief-history-of-sub... ("In an early incarnation of mandatory minimum sentencing there were only two offences that automatically attracted the death penalty, treason and failing to answer a subpoena. Subpoenas as a tool of justice were considered so important that failing to answer it was a most egregious violation of civic duty. A person accused of murder may or may not be guilty, but if a person refused to answer a subpoena then they were seen as denying Jupiter’s justice itself."). Those principles were incorporated into what's called the third-party doctrine half a century ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine. But by then it was already an ancient principle.
magenta4 6mo ago
[dead]
unethical_ban 6mo ago
My biggest gripe is with the idea that any data shared with a third party is not subject to privacy. With cameras going up everywhere, operated by the government and with AI enabled, I wonder if geofencing is the biggest privacy threat we have.
- cucumber3732842 6mo ago
  >With cameras going up everywhere, operated by the government and with AI enabled, I wonder if geofencing is the biggest privacy threat we have. There's a cynical joke in the refrigeration/hvac industry to the tune of "it's good for the environment as long as DuPont has a monopoly on it/the 3rd world isn't making it" in reference to refrigerants' reliable pattern of being identified as bad for the environment and get regulated away right as patents expire, manufacturing proliferates and they and the equipment that uses them become cheap. Geofencing warrants and cell location data collection give me the same sort of "they're getting rid of it to move onto the next thing" vibes. Not that we shouldn't get rid of it.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
ck2 6mo ago
if geofencing for all people in the area of a crime becomes legal well then we know everyone who went to Epstein Island from their cellphone records Congress must subpoena them ALL especially the one that went all the way back to Trump Tower, who was it? https://www.wired.com/video/watch/we-tracked-every-visitor-to-epstein-island https://www.wired.com/video/watch/we-tracked-every-visitor-t...
- Linuxislife 6mo ago
  [dead]
- pocksuppet 6mo ago
  Congress also has the ability to override most laws, as long as they don't violate the constitution. If they make a law that says "the police cannot use cell location data" that will be the law.
reader9274 6mo ago
What's the difference between police looking up geofence data for the bank before and after a robbery to see who was there, and checking the bank's outdoor cameras to see what license plates were there?
- Alive-in-2025 6mo ago
  The difference is ubiquitous surveillance, which is well known to lead to false positives and inhibits freedom and protest. A world where we are all under surveillance and people actually want to increase it is not a free world.
- gravypod 6mo ago
  One would be scope. There's a big difference between a security camera next to a secure facility (bank, police evidence facility, school) and a 1 mi radius circle around that facility. Security cameras around a bank only track stuff within a field of view from the bank. A cell geofence could be millions of people if it's drawn in midtown. Another would be incentives. There's no reason to collect cell location data for everyone if you aren't able to use it for anything. I think just the fact that we are all monitored constantly is its own violation of our rights. We should have laws banning these practices.
  - gruez 6mo ago
    >Security cameras around a bank only track stuff within a field of view from the bank. A cell geofence could be millions of people if it's drawn in midtown. Given the ubiquity of security cameras they can just canvas local businesses and ask them to give it up. Given that warrants are involved, they can't even refuse.
    - gravypod 6mo ago
      Yes! That would be fantastic! They would need to approach many people, each having the ability to question the motivation! Or, they would need to convince a judge and obtain a warrant. This is the disaggregation of power of surveillance.
sega_sai 6mo ago
From the article: "Google says it stopped responding to geofence warrants last year, because the company no longer stores such data and instead keeps location data on each user’s device. But law enforcement has made geofence requests of other tech companies, including Apple, Lyft, Snapchat, Uber, Microsoft and Yahoo" That explains the changes Google did to the Timeline and why you can't see it in the browser anymore. That is great from them actually.
- tucnak 6mo ago
  Google never gets credit for shit like this, or their results in zero-knowledge maths and implementations, which are genuine public service beyond immediate productization.
  - idle_zealot 6mo ago
    From a factual standpoint it's good to acknowledge that pro-privacy work. From a standpoint of overall evaluating the actions, goals, incentives, and impacts of the company, they mean basically nothing. They are a surveillance advertising company, they will never, and can never, have a positive impact on privacy or human rights. To do so would destroy them.
    - oldcigarette 6mo ago
      No - they are an advertising company. It is to their advantage to be ahead of the game with something like federated ML if that is where society is headed. To say Google has no positive impact is absurd - engineers there generally care about protecting user data. There is probably better access controls at Google than anywhere else. Sure there are pressures like you said but a gross misplace of user trust is what would destroy them. Don't hate the player, hate the game.
      - convolvatron 6mo ago
        they kind of made the game, they are hardly victims here. I shouldn't have to be in a position to decide whether I trust them with a profile of all of my history and activities, especially when I never had an option to opt out, much less opt in.
jauntywundrkind 6mo ago
There's a nice map on Bluesky of what area of data Google is being asked to hand over. To be honest it's not actually huge. Personally though, that feels like not a great safeguard, not enough to make me ok with this. https://bsky.app/profile/audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app/post/3mkav56a7ac2k https://bsky.app/profile/audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app/post/3... Worth noting that Google has changed its practice since 2019, supposedly, to keep location data on device, not accessible to them. However I have little doubt the cellphone carriers are also available to provide this data. https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/5/24172204/google-maps-delete-location-history-timeline https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/5/24172204/google-maps-delet... Governments rapidly turning data into a liability. Data is the new oil is out, data is the new toxic waste is in. The consumer sentiment continues to get worse and worse as it becomes clearer and clearer that we are being intruded upon at will. It would be excellent to see some progress, in expanding & respecting our human rights to privacy.
- buzer 6mo ago
  > It would be excellent to see some progress, in expanding & respecting our human rights to privacy. There are many laws in place in EU which forbids many kind of practices which infringe on privacy, but the issue is that governments don't really enforce them proactively. And in some cases where they are the ones breaking them (e.g. by enacting law that is not compatible with EU Charter or ECHR) it will take long time to get judgement which forbids the practice. Often the path is that you complain to DPA, you appeal to court, you appeal to higher court, (repeat last step X times), during court appeals you may need to wait for CJEU ruling and finally you might be able to file appeal to ECtHR. In one "recent" case from Finland the original DPA decision was issued in 8/2020. I'm not sure how long this exact case took, but there are some recent decisions which took 5 years to issue. It was appealed to administrative court and court made request to CJEU on 11/2021. CJEU gave ruling on 6/2023. Administrative court gave ruling on 12/2023. It was appealed and higher administrative court gave ruling on 6/2025. So it could take 10 years to annul an illegal law or practice.
nekusar 6mo ago
As long as a judge issued the warrant for geofence data, I see less wrong with it. It passed judicial scrutiny, AND can itself be challenged. As of now, most of these jurisdictions are a FLOCK search away, with absolutely no warrant, oversight, warrant, or anything. Like, all of these abominations https://maps.deflock.org/?lat=37.5620&lng=-77.4559&zoom=11.25 https://maps.deflock.org/?lat=37.5620&lng=-77.4559&zoom=11.2...
- chromacity 6mo ago
  > As long as a judge issued the warrant for geofence data, I see less wrong with it. It passed judicial scrutiny, AND can itself be challenged. The cops say "someone committed a crime in this area, we need to find the perp". They can pretty much say this for any part of the town at any given time. A judge signs off on the warrant, because why wouldn't they? You don't get to challenge anything: no one is going to tell you "hey, your phone was in that area, come to the courthouse and make your case if you think the police shouldn't be given that info".
  - nekusar 6mo ago
    Again the key here is "Due Process". Im comparing due process with a judges' signature, compared to shit like FLOCK and other non-search warranted processes. And if the warrant was deemed wrongfully granted, the case itself can be dismissed or mistrial. How much corporate data was just purchased rather than search warranted? Data brokers and parallel construction is a lot larger issue. And about the cops giving that "someone committed a crime in this area, we need to find the perp" - pig's will always give bullshit reasons. Thats why I went to the judge's determination, rather than oinkers demanding everything and manufacturing whatever they want.
- adgjlsfhk1 6mo ago
  imo there should be a requirement for the gov to tell you within a reasonable time period (a year?) whenever a search warrant is granted for your data. currently there is no ability to check the government because you never learn that you were searched.
fusslo 6mo ago
I listened to the arguments, here's my notes live: -- One justice asked petitioner that because 'If you don't want the government to have your location history, you just flip that off. You dont have to have that feature on your phone. so whats the issue?' They continue to talk about the Terms of Service stating that Google will comply with legitimate government requests. And both the petitioner and justices seem to agree that ANY data would be then up for grabs by the government (without a warrant) if it is stored in the cloud (including email, docs, photos, calendar, business records, etc). Sotomayor points out that the government would need NO warrant to access these records. The google feature doesn't exist anymore. But in the amicus brief some 30 providers still have features in similar pattern of record storage. 'Google can track you down to 3 feet'. Google had to search "500 million" accounts for the search in question. Justice Jackson asks why they aren't looking at the case as a 'reasonable expectation of privacy'? The petitioner agrees, and points out that the data is protected by a password. So the data is NOT public. "Data on the network is property." - how we get laws against stealing data/trespassing data Probable Cause was an interesting argument. about 90 minutes in. It went by too quickly. The justice seems to say that google's servers are one 'place'. The justice also sees the output of 3 people despite google 'searching' 19 people as the only people who matter. Responder is leaning heavy into the 'consent' for google to store location history. Is it possible to turn location history off on modern android phones? Responder also argues that because you're in public AT SOME POINT, then your location data is no different than a cctv data pointing at the street. Then a justice interrupts to make the responder say that YES the government CAN perform these searches on anyone it wants any time it wants without a warrant. For example people who seek abortion, or were at a political event. And the responder agrees! Responder says the email, photos, and docs still need a warrant because they're like your thoughts or mail, where location is different because people are 'constantly advertising' their location to google. To me, the responder is arguing two things: 1. That whatever you do in public is always available without a warrant 2. Your location history stored in google (or others) are generated in public and are therefore don't require a warrant. Responder says location records are records google creates on your phone. Justice asks why no one of the 500M people who were searched have complained? (idk, maybe because we have no way of knowing we were searched?)
- vel0city 6mo ago
HardCodedBias 6mo ago
Most people don't understand how powerless police are to find criminals. That they catch them at all is often amazing. I have firsthand knowledge of this from a tragic loss in my family. The investigation was severely hindered because investigators could not utilize cell location data, despite knowing someone was present at the scene. Police spent an extensive amount of time trying to identify them without success. When the identity was eventually discovered through entirely different avenues, it confirmed the individual had a cell phone on them. The location data would have resolved the identification trivially. We should enable this capability and put strict "guardrails" on its use.
- cobertos 6mo ago
  Huh? This is how it already works, cell companies themselves have this data. And they sell it. The "strict guardrails" don't work. Never did.
  - HardCodedBias 6mo ago
    You are entirely incorrect. Here is the LLM's summary of the current legal issue at hand: Attempting to determine the identity of an unknown individual co-located with a victim at a specific time requires a reverse-location query. Because the Supreme Court has not yet established a unified national doctrine for these searches post-Carpenter, lower courts are highly fragmented. Many magistrates systematically refuse to authorize geofence warrants or tower dumps, citing the lack of individualized probable cause for the peripheral, innocent devices swept up in the geographic net. And indeed, in my case, the police were not able to conduct this geofenced investigation (which would have instantly idenitied the person).
- cataphract 6mo ago
  I have no doubt this geo fencing data solves crimes and I don't even think it's as bad as e.g. the long surveillance in Carpenter. The problem is that the police are going to start using like they do with much more precise DNA data, and more innocent people are going to caught in the net. The bar to convict someone (or, more likely, to convince an innocent person to take a plea deal) is not as high ("beyond a reasonable doubt") as some people think. Get caught apparently contradicting hard data or even a witness and there goes your reasonable doubt.
josefritzishere 6mo ago
Seems like a very clear fourth amendment violation; not that this is the ideal court to respect those precedents.
ryanisnan 6mo ago
Unrelated, but archive.ph links don't seem to work with nytimes anymore.
- dmix 6mo ago
  https://periscope.corsfix.com/?https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/27/us/politics/supreme-court-cell-data-geofence.html https://periscope.corsfix.com/?https://www.nytimes.com/2026/...
  - ryanisnan 6mo ago
    Thanks!

257 points by unethical_ban 6mo ago

https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/27/politics/geofencing-supreme-geofencing-cellphone-data https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/27/politics/geofencing-supreme-g...

mothballed 6mo ago

With parallel construction on the menu, this is largely academic. There is zero percent chance police and those who profit from their patronage will give up cell location sweeps.

Detrytus 6mo ago
You cannot do a parallel construction if the telecom operator refuses to share data with you in the first place. And if SCOTUS makes the right decision here they will have legal grounds to refuse.
- mothballed 6mo ago
  Again, I hope your position here is something more than 'largely academic.' Optimistically it may be, history tells us AT&T Mobile, T-mobile, Verizon, etc (pretty much all the major carriers except perhaps Dish) have been caught selling data for a buck and have still only pledged not to sell to agreggators (not law enforcement). There is incontrovertible evidence major carriers are ready and willing, and indeed have sold this to patrons they can profit from. In theory your comment may be a rebuttal to the 'largely academic' assertion I made, in practice it's largely a distinction without much difference. Your rebuttal is a pretty remarkable, eccentric claim in the context of the vast majority of telcos that will share the data for a profit (as I put it, 'profit from the patronage [of the police]'). Whether the request comes in the form of a warrant -- again -- largely academic in such case. Your assertion requires some strong data to overcome the evidence to the contrary, if it is intended as a rebuttal. It's also worth noting illegally executed warrants don't stop you from getting the data. I've had cops force a hospital to search me before, then get the warrant actually signed after they did it. It didn't stop the hospital from executing the warrant, it just means they evidence couldn't be directly used against me. That's another lever they have, illegally execute a warrant, get the evidence they can't use in court, then parallel construction. Sure your lawyer can argue "the fruits of this warrant have to be tossed out" but it doesn't mean dick -- they already secretly used it to get other evidence that won't be tossed out.

superkuh 6mo ago

I've been listening to this live and it's clear how Kavenaugh will vote regardless of the validity of the arguments. His mind is set and he's well into coming up with barely related hypotheticals introducing exigency into a case where there was none (the geofencing request for spying on a large group of people was done a week after the crime occured).

ceejayoz 6mo ago
SCOTUS has been this way for a while now. They start with the desired decision and work backwards to justify it.
- seanw444 6mo ago
  Or they refuse to hear cases that they know will go the way they don't want.
rayiner 6mo ago
You're presupposing there's a valid argument for the other side. The text of the fourth amendment clearly connects the scope of privacy to property rights: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." Cell location data belongs to AT&T and Verizon, not the accused individual. As to such third-party data, there's a general principle rooted in Roman law that third parties can be compelled to provide documents in their possession to aid a court proceeding: https://commerciallore.com/2015/06/04/a-brief-history-of-subpoenas/ https://commerciallore.com/2015/06/04/a-brief-history-of-sub... ("In an early incarnation of mandatory minimum sentencing there were only two offences that automatically attracted the death penalty, treason and failing to answer a subpoena. Subpoenas as a tool of justice were considered so important that failing to answer it was a most egregious violation of civic duty. A person accused of murder may or may not be guilty, but if a person refused to answer a subpoena then they were seen as denying Jupiter’s justice itself."). Those principles were incorporated into what's called the third-party doctrine half a century ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine. But by then it was already an ancient principle.

magenta4 6mo ago

[dead]

unethical_ban 6mo ago

My biggest gripe is with the idea that any data shared with a third party is not subject to privacy. With cameras going up everywhere, operated by the government and with AI enabled, I wonder if geofencing is the biggest privacy threat we have.

cucumber3732842 6mo ago
>With cameras going up everywhere, operated by the government and with AI enabled, I wonder if geofencing is the biggest privacy threat we have. There's a cynical joke in the refrigeration/hvac industry to the tune of "it's good for the environment as long as DuPont has a monopoly on it/the 3rd world isn't making it" in reference to refrigerants' reliable pattern of being identified as bad for the environment and get regulated away right as patents expire, manufacturing proliferates and they and the equipment that uses them become cheap. Geofencing warrants and cell location data collection give me the same sort of "they're getting rid of it to move onto the next thing" vibes. Not that we shouldn't get rid of it.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

ck2 6mo ago

if geofencing for all people in the area of a crime becomes legal well then we know everyone who went to Epstein Island from their cellphone records Congress must subpoena them ALL especially the one that went all the way back to Trump Tower, who was it? https://www.wired.com/video/watch/we-tracked-every-visitor-to-epstein-island https://www.wired.com/video/watch/we-tracked-every-visitor-t...

Linuxislife 6mo ago
[dead]
pocksuppet 6mo ago
Congress also has the ability to override most laws, as long as they don't violate the constitution. If they make a law that says "the police cannot use cell location data" that will be the law.

reader9274 6mo ago

What's the difference between police looking up geofence data for the bank before and after a robbery to see who was there, and checking the bank's outdoor cameras to see what license plates were there?

Alive-in-2025 6mo ago
The difference is ubiquitous surveillance, which is well known to lead to false positives and inhibits freedom and protest. A world where we are all under surveillance and people actually want to increase it is not a free world.
gravypod 6mo ago
One would be scope. There's a big difference between a security camera next to a secure facility (bank, police evidence facility, school) and a 1 mi radius circle around that facility. Security cameras around a bank only track stuff within a field of view from the bank. A cell geofence could be millions of people if it's drawn in midtown. Another would be incentives. There's no reason to collect cell location data for everyone if you aren't able to use it for anything. I think just the fact that we are all monitored constantly is its own violation of our rights. We should have laws banning these practices.
- gruez 6mo ago
  >Security cameras around a bank only track stuff within a field of view from the bank. A cell geofence could be millions of people if it's drawn in midtown. Given the ubiquity of security cameras they can just canvas local businesses and ask them to give it up. Given that warrants are involved, they can't even refuse.
  - gravypod 6mo ago
    Yes! That would be fantastic! They would need to approach many people, each having the ability to question the motivation! Or, they would need to convince a judge and obtain a warrant. This is the disaggregation of power of surveillance.

sega_sai 6mo ago

From the article: "Google says it stopped responding to geofence warrants last year, because the company no longer stores such data and instead keeps location data on each user’s device. But law enforcement has made geofence requests of other tech companies, including Apple, Lyft, Snapchat, Uber, Microsoft and Yahoo" That explains the changes Google did to the Timeline and why you can't see it in the browser anymore. That is great from them actually.

tucnak 6mo ago
Google never gets credit for shit like this, or their results in zero-knowledge maths and implementations, which are genuine public service beyond immediate productization.
- idle_zealot 6mo ago
  From a factual standpoint it's good to acknowledge that pro-privacy work. From a standpoint of overall evaluating the actions, goals, incentives, and impacts of the company, they mean basically nothing. They are a surveillance advertising company, they will never, and can never, have a positive impact on privacy or human rights. To do so would destroy them.
  - oldcigarette 6mo ago
    No - they are an advertising company. It is to their advantage to be ahead of the game with something like federated ML if that is where society is headed. To say Google has no positive impact is absurd - engineers there generally care about protecting user data. There is probably better access controls at Google than anywhere else. Sure there are pressures like you said but a gross misplace of user trust is what would destroy them. Don't hate the player, hate the game.
    - convolvatron 6mo ago
      they kind of made the game, they are hardly victims here. I shouldn't have to be in a position to decide whether I trust them with a profile of all of my history and activities, especially when I never had an option to opt out, much less opt in.

jauntywundrkind 6mo ago

There's a nice map on Bluesky of what area of data Google is being asked to hand over. To be honest it's not actually huge. Personally though, that feels like not a great safeguard, not enough to make me ok with this. https://bsky.app/profile/audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app/post/3mkav56a7ac2k https://bsky.app/profile/audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app/post/3... Worth noting that Google has changed its practice since 2019, supposedly, to keep location data on device, not accessible to them. However I have little doubt the cellphone carriers are also available to provide this data. https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/5/24172204/google-maps-delete-location-history-timeline https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/5/24172204/google-maps-delet... Governments rapidly turning data into a liability. Data is the new oil is out, data is the new toxic waste is in. The consumer sentiment continues to get worse and worse as it becomes clearer and clearer that we are being intruded upon at will. It would be excellent to see some progress, in expanding & respecting our human rights to privacy.

buzer 6mo ago
> It would be excellent to see some progress, in expanding & respecting our human rights to privacy. There are many laws in place in EU which forbids many kind of practices which infringe on privacy, but the issue is that governments don't really enforce them proactively. And in some cases where they are the ones breaking them (e.g. by enacting law that is not compatible with EU Charter or ECHR) it will take long time to get judgement which forbids the practice. Often the path is that you complain to DPA, you appeal to court, you appeal to higher court, (repeat last step X times), during court appeals you may need to wait for CJEU ruling and finally you might be able to file appeal to ECtHR. In one "recent" case from Finland the original DPA decision was issued in 8/2020. I'm not sure how long this exact case took, but there are some recent decisions which took 5 years to issue. It was appealed to administrative court and court made request to CJEU on 11/2021. CJEU gave ruling on 6/2023. Administrative court gave ruling on 12/2023. It was appealed and higher administrative court gave ruling on 6/2025. So it could take 10 years to annul an illegal law or practice.

nekusar 6mo ago

As long as a judge issued the warrant for geofence data, I see less wrong with it. It passed judicial scrutiny, AND can itself be challenged. As of now, most of these jurisdictions are a FLOCK search away, with absolutely no warrant, oversight, warrant, or anything. Like, all of these abominations https://maps.deflock.org/?lat=37.5620&lng=-77.4559&zoom=11.25 https://maps.deflock.org/?lat=37.5620&lng=-77.4559&zoom=11.2...

chromacity 6mo ago
> As long as a judge issued the warrant for geofence data, I see less wrong with it. It passed judicial scrutiny, AND can itself be challenged. The cops say "someone committed a crime in this area, we need to find the perp". They can pretty much say this for any part of the town at any given time. A judge signs off on the warrant, because why wouldn't they? You don't get to challenge anything: no one is going to tell you "hey, your phone was in that area, come to the courthouse and make your case if you think the police shouldn't be given that info".
- nekusar 6mo ago
  Again the key here is "Due Process". Im comparing due process with a judges' signature, compared to shit like FLOCK and other non-search warranted processes. And if the warrant was deemed wrongfully granted, the case itself can be dismissed or mistrial. How much corporate data was just purchased rather than search warranted? Data brokers and parallel construction is a lot larger issue. And about the cops giving that "someone committed a crime in this area, we need to find the perp" - pig's will always give bullshit reasons. Thats why I went to the judge's determination, rather than oinkers demanding everything and manufacturing whatever they want.
adgjlsfhk1 6mo ago
imo there should be a requirement for the gov to tell you within a reasonable time period (a year?) whenever a search warrant is granted for your data. currently there is no ability to check the government because you never learn that you were searched.

fusslo 6mo ago

I listened to the arguments, here's my notes live: -- One justice asked petitioner that because 'If you don't want the government to have your location history, you just flip that off. You dont have to have that feature on your phone. so whats the issue?' They continue to talk about the Terms of Service stating that Google will comply with legitimate government requests. And both the petitioner and justices seem to agree that ANY data would be then up for grabs by the government (without a warrant) if it is stored in the cloud (including email, docs, photos, calendar, business records, etc). Sotomayor points out that the government would need NO warrant to access these records. The google feature doesn't exist anymore. But in the amicus brief some 30 providers still have features in similar pattern of record storage. 'Google can track you down to 3 feet'. Google had to search "500 million" accounts for the search in question. Justice Jackson asks why they aren't looking at the case as a 'reasonable expectation of privacy'? The petitioner agrees, and points out that the data is protected by a password. So the data is NOT public. "Data on the network is property." - how we get laws against stealing data/trespassing data Probable Cause was an interesting argument. about 90 minutes in. It went by too quickly. The justice seems to say that google's servers are one 'place'. The justice also sees the output of 3 people despite google 'searching' 19 people as the only people who matter. Responder is leaning heavy into the 'consent' for google to store location history. Is it possible to turn location history off on modern android phones? Responder also argues that because you're in public AT SOME POINT, then your location data is no different than a cctv data pointing at the street. Then a justice interrupts to make the responder say that YES the government CAN perform these searches on anyone it wants any time it wants without a warrant. For example people who seek abortion, or were at a political event. And the responder agrees! Responder says the email, photos, and docs still need a warrant because they're like your thoughts or mail, where location is different because people are 'constantly advertising' their location to google. To me, the responder is arguing two things: 1. That whatever you do in public is always available without a warrant 2. Your location history stored in google (or others) are generated in public and are therefore don't require a warrant. Responder says location records are records google creates on your phone. Justice asks why no one of the 500M people who were searched have complained? (idk, maybe because we have no way of knowing we were searched?)

vel0city 6mo ago

HardCodedBias 6mo ago

Most people don't understand how powerless police are to find criminals. That they catch them at all is often amazing. I have firsthand knowledge of this from a tragic loss in my family. The investigation was severely hindered because investigators could not utilize cell location data, despite knowing someone was present at the scene. Police spent an extensive amount of time trying to identify them without success. When the identity was eventually discovered through entirely different avenues, it confirmed the individual had a cell phone on them. The location data would have resolved the identification trivially. We should enable this capability and put strict "guardrails" on its use.

cobertos 6mo ago
Huh? This is how it already works, cell companies themselves have this data. And they sell it. The "strict guardrails" don't work. Never did.
- HardCodedBias 6mo ago
  You are entirely incorrect. Here is the LLM's summary of the current legal issue at hand: Attempting to determine the identity of an unknown individual co-located with a victim at a specific time requires a reverse-location query. Because the Supreme Court has not yet established a unified national doctrine for these searches post-Carpenter, lower courts are highly fragmented. Many magistrates systematically refuse to authorize geofence warrants or tower dumps, citing the lack of individualized probable cause for the peripheral, innocent devices swept up in the geographic net. And indeed, in my case, the police were not able to conduct this geofenced investigation (which would have instantly idenitied the person).
cataphract 6mo ago
I have no doubt this geo fencing data solves crimes and I don't even think it's as bad as e.g. the long surveillance in Carpenter. The problem is that the police are going to start using like they do with much more precise DNA data, and more innocent people are going to caught in the net. The bar to convict someone (or, more likely, to convince an innocent person to take a plea deal) is not as high ("beyond a reasonable doubt") as some people think. Get caught apparently contradicting hard data or even a witness and there goes your reasonable doubt.

josefritzishere 6mo ago

Seems like a very clear fourth amendment violation; not that this is the ideal court to respect those precedents.

ryanisnan 6mo ago

Unrelated, but archive.ph links don't seem to work with nytimes anymore.

dmix 6mo ago
https://periscope.corsfix.com/?https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/27/us/politics/supreme-court-cell-data-geofence.html https://periscope.corsfix.com/?https://www.nytimes.com/2026/...
- ryanisnan 6mo ago
  Thanks!