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From https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/court-rules-that-law-enforcements-use-of-geofence-warrant-was-a-search/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/court-rules-t
by js2 3mo ago
From https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/court-rules-that-law-enforcements-use-of-geofence-warrant-was-a-search/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/court-rules-that-law-enfo...
Additional details:
> The information that Google provided to law enforcement officials came in three tranches. First, Google gave law enforcement officials a list of the 19 accounts (but without the names attached to those accounts) linked to devices that were within 150 meters of the bank during the 30 minutes before and after the robbery. Second, based on that list of 19 accounts, the government asked for additional information about nine accounts that were in the area during a two-hour period. At the third step, a detective asked for, and received, the names and information associated with three accounts – one of which was Chatrie’s.
> Relying on the location data, law enforcement officials obtained a warrant to search two residences linked to Chatrie, where they found almost $100,000 of the stolen cash, a gun, and demand notes.
> Prosecutors charged Chatrie with bank robbery. He asked the trial judge to bar prosecutors from using the evidence obtained as a result of the geofence warrant at his trial, arguing that the warrant violated the Fourth Amendment.
> A federal district judge agreed that the warrant in Chatrie’s case did not have the kind of probable cause and specificity that the Fourth Amendment requires. However, she nonetheless allowed the prosecutors to use the evidence, reasoning that even if there had been a violation of the Fourth Amendment, law enforcement officials had acted in good faith.
Link to ruling:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-112_0am4.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-112_0am4.pdf
- petcat 3mo agoI guess don't bring your phone to a bank robbery. I believe this is similar to how they nabbed the Washington State University murderer. The feds compelled Amazon to give them all the bluetooth MAC addresses that was seen by the Echo device in the home around the time of the murders and were able to correlate it to other devices their suspect's phone had been visible to.
- xyzzy_plugh 3mo agoDo you have a source for this? I find it hard to believe this data is persisted, unless they tore open the device to extract logs.
- ceejayoz 3mo agohttps://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/amazon-releases-echo-data-murder-case-dropping-first-amendment-argument https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/amazon-releases-echo-dat...
- xyzzy_plugh 3mo agoThis article is about audio recordings. There's no mention of Bluetooth nor any mention as to if there were any relevant recordings, which as I understand it are not stored on the device at all. This smells like an urban myth.
- ceejayoz 3mo agoI don't think it's implausible that an Echo would have an internal list of trusted Bluetooth devices and their last date of connectivity.
- xyzzy_plugh 3mo agoThe original claim is: > all the bluetooth MAC addresses that was seen by the Echo device in the home around the time of the murders which is just not how this stuff works. I'd believe it if, say, debug-level logs were being recorded locally. But that would be an incredibly stupid way to burn through your flash storage. But that's besides the point. A record of the last date of connectivity for trusted devices is an entirely different thing. I'm interested in evidence that this type of data extraction took place. I'm not interested in speculation.
- ceejayoz 3mo agoMy car shows "last seen" on its Bluetooth connections. The murderer in this case was an invited friend; it's hardly implausible he's connected to Bluetooth there. > I'm interested in evidence that this type of data extraction took place. That they obtained access to the Echo's internals via Amazon is evidence. It sounds like you want proof of a very particular bit of data being in it, which I'd guess the FBI etc. aren't going to provide here.
- autoexec 3mo ago> I guess don't bring your phone to a bank robbery. You should also make sure not to bring your phone to anywhere where a nearby crime is happening because that's all it takes to make you a suspect and force you spend a bunch of money defending yourself. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike-ride-past-burglarized-home-made-him-n1151761 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike... Hopefully rulings like this make that scenario a little less likely to happen, but it doesn't stop it entirely, it just means that the police need to spend 15 minutes to get a rubber-stamped warrant before they turn everyone within a few miles of crime into a suspect.
- bombcar 3mo agoI mean in this case it would also have helped not to have $100k in cash from a bank robbery laying around.
- jotux 3mo ago>You should also make sure not to bring your phone to anywhere where a nearby crime is happening because that's all it takes to make you a suspect Proximity to a crime makes you a suspect even without the phone, right?
- autoexec 3mo agoOnly if it's known that you were ever there in the first place, and people that typically wouldn't ever be considered, like someone who is quietly visiting in the living room of someone who lives nearby, will fall under scrutiny when police are just getting the data of everyone in a certain radius.
- kube-system 3mo agoA one hour period and 150 meter radius of a bank surrounded by cornfields? sure. A one hour period and 150 meter radius of a bank surrounded by high-rises and public transit? no.
- stinkbeetle 3mo ago
- BeetleB 3mo agoSource for this? As I recall, his phone was off when he committed the murders. In fact, they used the evidence that it had been turned off just for the duration of the murders (with some padding) against him. If you're going to commit a crime, don't suddenly turn off your phone if you don't have a history of doing so!
- rootusrootus 3mo agoOr just leave it at home on your bedside table where you ought to be sleeping instead of out killing.
- mjevans 3mo agoI have on at least two occasions forgotten my phone in my car at highly inconvenient times... One of which was just before a flight, for a vacation. I was amazed it had any battery life at all when I got back. Yes, this stuff does happen to real people doing normal things.
- BeetleB 3mo agoSure, but that pattern isn't going to make the cops think you committed a crime. And if you flew out, there's plenty of other evidence you're elsewhere (airline information, credit card usage, etc). To clarify, I'm not saying they used it against him in court (he didn't even have a trial). It did help in increasing their confidence in him as a suspect.
- dlcarrier 3mo agoHopeful they used the MAC address to find the phone, then tracked the phone itself, because an IMEI and ICCID are pretty difficult to clone, but a Bluetooth MAC address is trivially easy.
- petcat 3mo agoThe police already had the suspect in mind. They were just building supporting evidence. It was an airtight case. He ended up pleading guilty because otherwise Idaho would have executed him.
- brookst 3mo ago> I guess don't bring your phone to a bank robbery Yes, everyone knows to steal a phone from someone you hate and bring that to the robbery. Right?
- preg_match 3mo agoI mean, yeah, I wouldn’t even bring my phone to a legal protest. Or, I’d at least shut it down.
- bee_rider 3mo agoIt is a little confusing, they ruled that the search was not legitimate, but this didn’t end up helping the defendant? I’m definitely missing an important nuance here but I’m not sure what it is…
- sidewndr46 3mo agoThe judge doesn't care if the law was violated in collecting evidence.
- dylan604 3mo agoMaybe this particular judge didn't for whatever reasoning, but judges definitely prevent a prosecutor from introducing evidence based on how it was collected. This is why concepts like "fruit of poisonous tree" and "parallel construction" exist.
- harimau777 3mo agoDoesn't parallel construcction mean that judges actually don't care how evidence was collected? They can't possibly care that much if they are fine with a fig leaf like parallel construction.
- sidewndr46 3mo agoParallel construction means the judge doesn't know.
- NoGravitas 3mo agoOr can at least plausibly pretend not to.
- sidewndr46 3mo agoI guess that is true, although you'd be hard pressed to prove that. I don't think any court would hear a complaint about a lower court or adjacent court having participated willingly in parallel construction.
- plagiarist 3mo ago> [E]ven if there had been a violation of the Fourth Amendment, law enforcement officials had acted in good faith. How is this even remotely a possibility?
- ChrisKnott 3mo agoIt just means they were completely transparent with the court when getting the data, and believed themselves it was lawful. What’s hard to believe about that? They clearly put some effort into minimising the collateral privacy intrusions.
- plagiarist 3mo agoIn retrospect, the part I quoted is very unclear for what I intended. I should have added more. What's hard to believe is the data is apparently still allowed in the case. Like... how?
- twoodfin 3mo agoBecause the police got a warrant, exactly as this decision now says was required. And there's something called the "good-faith exception" for unreasonable warrants: If you get a warrant where it's required (or in this case, where the government tried to argue it wasn't!), and a magistrate grants that warrant, it's a legal warrant so long as all participants were acting in good faith, believing their actions to be legal. Even if a court later finds that the warrant should not have been issued for one reason or another. This is why Alito was grouchy during oral arguments and in his opinion that the Court took the case in the first place. The police got a warrant, acting in good faith. It allowed them to identify the criminal, who was later convicted. It wasn't clear that any decision by the court on the warrant requirement would have anything but an advisory effect, and SCOTUS doesn't do advisory opinions by longstanding tradition.
- Aerroon 3mo agoSo, all you need is a magistrate that rubber stamps every warrant and it removes all protections from search and seizure from anyone?
- LgWoodenBadger 3mo ago“Had acted in good faith” Seems like there’s no point in having the constitution if a violation of it has no effect.
- cvoss 3mo agoThe effect is going to be on the issuance or not of new warrants going forward in this domain. The police could not have foreseen this ruling. It was not previously known that such warrants were unconstitutional. Now we know. Now judges are not to issue such warrants.
- jojobas 3mo ago>Now judges are not to issue such warrants. But if they do, the warrants' harvest of evidence will still not be poisoned, because good faith?
- adastra22 3mo agoThere is no good faith protection once the case law is set.
- waffleiron 3mo agoBut why does that never work the same why for the individual that does a (supposed) crime?
- protocolture 3mo ago> A federal district judge agreed that the warrant in Chatrie’s case did not have the kind of probable cause and specificity that the Fourth Amendment requires. However, she nonetheless allowed the prosecutors to use the evidence, reasoning that even if there had been a violation of the Fourth Amendment, law enforcement officials had acted in good faith. Aww look at that hangdog expression. They earned a treat. Go on, have some unconstitutional evidence.