Source: Fox8Live

Okello Chatrie robbed the Call Federal Credit Union in Midlothian, Virginia, in May 2019 and escaped with $195,000 until investigators used a geofence warrant to obtain location histories of cellphone users near the bank. The geofence search of Google data identified Chatrie’s phone among devices in the area, invigorating an investigation that led to a search warrant for his home and the discovery of nearly $100,000 in cash, including bills banded and signed by the teller. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nearly 12 years in prison, but his attorneys challenged the geofence warrant as an unconstitutional invasion of privacy because it swept up location histories of many innocent people.

The Supreme Court will decide whether geofence warrants violate the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches, weighing claims that the technique amounts to a “fishing expedition” against prosecutors’ assertions that such warrants help solve crimes. Civil libertarians and law professors warned the court that an approval could “unleash a much broader wave of similar reverse searches,” while police credited geofence warrants with identifying suspects in cases including the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Federal courts are split: a Richmond appeals court upheld Chatrie’s conviction in a fractured ruling, a New Orleans appeals court called geofence warrants general warrants, and a federal judge found the search violated rights but admitted the evidence under an officer-good-faith rationale. The dispute raises questions about any expectation of privacy for individuals who opt into Google’s location history and revisits the Supreme Court’s prior concerns about the vast amount of location data modern technology collects.