To its credit, the article covers all the reasons why the <i>Chatrie</i> decision won’t be determinative for this case.<p>But the headline and narrative paint a way too optimistic (if you’re anti-Flock) picture of <i>Chatrie</i>’s impact.<p>In particular the search identified by <i>Chatrie</i> (Google’s database of expected-private location records, including movement in the home and other private spaces) has almost no analog in third-party-owned recordings of public movement.
But Chatrie found that the geofence was unconstitutional because of the wide dragnet which included people not suspected of crimes, not because those people were in private spaces:<p>> The Court held that police conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they obtained Chatrie's location data, because, as the opinion put it, "an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell-phone location information."<p>The analogue with Flock is pretty clear then:<p>> Just as important as the holding is the reasoning: the Court rejected the government's fallback argument that the search was fine because it only pulled a narrow, time-limited slice of a much larger dataset. Once the Fourth Amendment applies, the majority reasoned, it doesn't matter how small a bite investigators took out of an all-encompassing database.
As I understand the ruling, the Court decided these location records were akin to a diary or a personal photograph.<p>That’s what triggered the essential element of an expectation of privacy, from which the fact of a search was established.<p>Totally absent in this case, as far as I can tell.
No, they argued these records are akin to a record of the person's travel history.<p>> As Google puts it, and no one seriously disputes, Location History serves as a “diary” or map “of a person’s travels.”<p>"Diary" is a red herring here. They're referring to a location log, just like what Flock produces.
Is Flock really 3rd party? Yes, they're a private entity, but they largely owe their existence to government contracts. They maintain their database on behalf of various governments. Their primary sales pitch is to law enforcement. It feels like something completely different than Alphabet's or Meta's databases of person/user data.<p>I do agree that Flock is also not the same as the database of cell phone location data that Verizon or Apple or whoever else might maintain.<p>It's somewhere in the middle, IMO. At least to my non-lawyer brain.
Being a government contractor doesn't make you a part of the government. A lot of companies have government contracts, many more so than Flock.
Specifically as intended.<p>For states where law enforcement cannot do such things directly, they can still contract with a private provider, either as an RFP, or (as in some states) "you can't RFP this butttt if some private provider <i>just so happened</i> to provide it, you can use it".
Not sure I agree. The only difference I see is the idea that there's no expectation of privacy while driving on public roads. That's potentially a huge difference, certainly, but I don't think it makes the negative outcome here quite as likely as you think.<p>Otherwise, it's the same: Google's database is a third-party-owned record of people's movements in public, and Flock's database is a third-party-owned record of people's movement in public.<p>The ruling in Chatrie had nothing to do with an expectation of privacy, or lack thereof. It was about the dragnet nature of the surveillance. And in that respect, I don't see any meaningful difference between Flock's and Google's systems.
>The only difference I see is the idea that there's no expectation of privacy while driving on public roads.<p>Isn't there some level of expectation if for your whole life these mass networks didn't exist and you could go to the grocery store without being locked in database prison?
The very first holding of the majority opinion by Kagan:<p><i>Held: Police officers conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they
acquired Chatrie’s location data from Google because an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell-phone location information.</i><p>Note the possessive “his”. Crucial to the case, this was held to be the individual’s data, not the third-party’s.
Why would the expectation of privacy be different depending on which spectrum of light the information was captured in (visible vs radio)?<p>In both scenarios, the data is held by a private third party and a person generates this data pretty much by-default.<p>This is the relevant bit:<p>In Carpenter, this Court held that accessing cell-site location
information (CSLI) constitutes a Fourth Amendment search because
“individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of their physical movements,” 585 U. S., at 310. The Court reasoned that CSLI provides a “detailed” and “encyclopedic” portrait of a person’s whereabouts, id., at 309, and, with that, “an intimate window into a person’s life,” id., at 311. Because people “compulsively carry” their cell phones “all the time,” the Court explained, a cell phone “tracks nearly exactly the movements of its owner,” and thus “faithfully follows” him not only through “public thoroughfares [but] into private residences, doctor’s offices, political headquarters, and other potentially revealing locales.”
This question seems preposterous on its face. If you walk around in public wearing a t-shirt with text on it, there's a reasonable expectation that people will read it. Specifically because it reflects light.
<i>Chatrie</i> was about Google’s personal location tracking feature in Android, not about carrier tower records.
Which is also irrelevant<p>There's nothing special about any particular technology at all. The question is whether people have an option to generate the data for a third party (Google, Flock, or cell tower operators) and then the sensitivity of that resulting data.<p>Carpenter is pretty simple: If you <i>by virtue of existing in the modern world</i> produce a bunch of super sensitive data that third parties now have, then those third parties aren't allowed to just give the government that data.
I'm not sure that's quite as clear as you say it is. It could be "his" as in "about the person" rather than "belonging to the person".
The Fourth Amendment covers exclusively “their persons, houses, papers, and effects” so it has to be one of those.
Yes, while I'm not a fan of fully networked, recorded, ubiquitous license plate tracking, it is quite different than the cell phone.<p>License plate number is a registered identifier mandated to be fully plainly visible, with that identifier tied to a registered individual; compared to cell phone which has identifiers, sure, but they're not registered to an individual necessarily, and not mandated to be plainly visible, rather only "visible" as a means of service provision.
This court has had little respect for precedent so maybe an argument here is more about the fact that rulings like this one may become more likely.