#okellochatrie — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

Techdirt [Unofficial] @[email protected]

2026-06-30

SCOTUS Hands Down Limited 4th Amendment Win In Geofence Warrant Case

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/30/scotus-hands-down-limited-4th-amendment-win-in-geofence-warrant-case/

#4thamendment #carpentervus #csli #generalwarrants #geofencewarrants #locationtracking

The Bad Place @[email protected]

2026-04-30

English – The Conversation | Supreme Court geofencing case weighs constitutionality of digital dragnets – and how far your rights go in the data Big Tech collects on you by Anne Toomey McKenna, Affiliated Faculty Member, Institute for Computational and Data Sciences, Penn State

AI generated summary, Read the full article for complete information.

The U.S. Supreme Court is set to decide whether law‑enforcement can use “geofence” warrants—orders that force tech companies such as Google to turn over the location data of every cellphone within a defined area and time frame—to investigate crimes, a practice at the heart of the case Chatrie v. United States. The dispute arose from a 2019 armed bank robbery in Midlothian, Virginia, where detectives obtained a warrant that compelled Google to identify all devices in a 17½‑acre zone for two hours, ultimately leading them to suspect Okello Chatrie. While the trial court and the Fourth Circuit upheld the warrant as lawful, the Fifth Circuit recently declared similar geofence warrants unconstitutional “general warrants” under the Fourth Amendment, creating a split that the Supreme Court must resolve. Critics argue that these warrants bypass the constitutional requirement of particularity, sweep up innocent users who never consented to be included, and lack adequate judicial oversight, whereas the government maintains that users voluntarily share location data and therefore have no reasonable expectation of privacy. The Court’s ruling will shape the future of digital surveillance, defining whether broad, reverse‑search warrants can be used to capture the digital trails that modern smartphones continuously generate.

#SupremeCourt #Google #FourthAmendment #bigtech #OkelloChatrie