From <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/court-rules-that-law-enforcements-use-of-geofence-warrant-was-a-search/" rel="nofollow">https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/court-rules-that-law-enfo...</a><p>Additional details:<p>> 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.<p>> 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.<p>> 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.<p>> 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.<p>Link to ruling:<p><a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-112_0am4.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-112_0am4.pdf</a>
Of course Alito and Thomas would have allowed the government unlimited power. I am bit surprised to see Barret in the minority of this one.
As per the current conservative trend of allowing authoritarianism through technicality, the majority of Alito's dissent is just that the Court shouldn't rule on this at all because it won't help the defendant's case much specifically.
With the exception of citizens vs united, I think most of the decisions of the "conservative" court have been along the lines that congress should do its job. I don't see how all this turns out well for normal people, but if it does, I think congress will have to be much stronger than it was within the federal government, and the federal government will have to be much weaker than it was. The structural problems are that the federal government doesn't want to be weaker, and congress people don't want to be stronger, because they have no term limits, so they don't want the power to rock the boat.
> I think most of the decisions of the "conservative" court have been along the lines that congress should do its job.<p>They have repeatedly reduced Congressional powers, including today, where they basically said Congress can't setup genuinely independent agencies (in Slaughter). Or when they kneecapped the VRA.
She's not as big on some of the broader interpretations of the 4th amendment that more civil liberty minded justices would lend credence to.
PDF of the full decision: <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-112_0am4.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-112_0am4.pdf</a>
Excellent, I wonder how this might impact things like this:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48467712">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48467712</a>
Birthright citizenship decision coming tomorrow.
Yep. And this hypocritical bench has had a pattern of ruling sensibly on minor issues like this just before ruling with torturous rationalizations to strip rights from people on larger issues. Feels like there's about to be some pure bullshit spewing from the right flank of this illegitimate court.
I'd dearly love to be wrong about this, but I'm not holding out hope. Until alito and thomas are impeached for unconstitutional rulings and bribery, there's nothing worth hoping for.
good. Of course the precise language of the ruling matters, but good.
What if they purchase the information from a company peddling it rather than compelling cell phone companies to hand it over?
For an example of what can be done with such purchased data, one project at a previous employer was:<p>- identifying all cell phone #s which would regularly appear w/in a certain radius of any State Police Barracks<p>- disambiguating that from people who lived/worked nearby and/or who met certain criteria<p>- determining the income and certain other criteria of the remaining numbers<p>- identifying the home address of the remaining cell #s which met the final criteria and mailing a franchise offer to those cell #s with the assumption that it would be targeting State Police Troopers
This data was being “compelled” from Google. If Google had told its users that their data might be sold, had sold it, and the government had acquired it that way, this case comes out differently.<p>In reality, Google simply stopped collecting this data in their cloud, leaving it only on the phone.<p>Highly recommend (as always) listening to the oral arguments in your favorite podcast player. The specific question of how Google’s T&C’s mattered here came up more than once.
That is the loop hole IMO and that's how they will get around it.
rare scotus W, but i strongly suspect that because this data is "owned" by someone other than the people that generated it that said owners will simply choose to voluntarily cooperate with government inquiries 100% of the time. You can suppress information if the government unconstitutionally compels google to turn it over, but I don't believe that you as a defendant could push to exclude evidence if it was willingly turned over by a third party that had the right to have it.