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US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

theguardian.com

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Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#41

Post by ceejayoz »

mothballed wrote: post #34
ceejayoz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Slaughter determined that agencies congress had ceded to the executive branch had control of the executive. The law Congress passed set rules requiring cause for a firing of an FTC commissioner. It appears they now lack that power that they've had for almost a century. Or Alito's new "history and tradition" test, invented out of whole cloth to take out abortion but now being applied to all sorts of things Congress…

Statutes don't supersede the constitution and passing one doesn't create that power.

> Statutes don't supersede the constitution…

"We can make rules the President has to follow" does not supersede the Constitution.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#42

Post by mothballed »

ceejayoz wrote: post #41
mothballed wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statutes don't supersede the constitution and passing one doesn't create that power.

> Statutes don't supersede the constitution… "We can make rules the President has to follow" does not supersede the Constitution.

In this case, it did, that's why SCOTUS ruled against it.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#43

Post by ceejayoz »

mothballed wrote: post #42
ceejayoz wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Statutes don't supersede the constitution… "We can make rules the President has to follow" does not supersede the Constitution.

In this case, it did, that's why SCOTUS ruled against it.

SCOTUS does not enjoy papal infallibility. They fuck up.

(Or act maliciously, as when Alito invented the new "history and tradition" test.)

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#44

Post by cmiles8 »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #40

IANAL, what are the practical implications of this? I assume the outcome is police would first need probable cause to suspect a specific person of a crime, and then get a warrant for that person's location. Am I wrong?

It’s raising the bar for doing these searches. Essentially saying some government investigator can’t go “oh well if we had this data we might find something interesting, so let’s get the data.” The court here is saying these geofenced searches smell a lot like such a fishing expedition hoping to find something interesting.

Rather you should have evidence that a specific person did a specific thing and need to conduct a search to find additional evidence of said person doing said thing.

The 4th amendment protects US persons from the government just doing generalized searches in hopes that it will turn up useful info. You have a right to privacy from the government unless the government can clear a high bar showing probable cause that you’ve done something wrong.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#45

Post by Cider9986 »

atroon wrote: post #25
puppycodes wrote: post #3

Excellent, I wonder how this might impact things like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48467712

It will offer this company and those similar to it the ability to increase shareholder value by selling amalgamated information to law enforcement.

Google, the company in the case in question, doesn't sell your data. That would be a big change for them to start, they like to keep it for themselves.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#46

Post by ChrisKnott »

plagiarist wrote: post #37
js2 wrote: post #10

From 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,…

> [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?

It 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.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#47

Post by jotux »

autoexec wrote: post #30
petcat wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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.

> 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... Hopefully rulings like this make that scenario a little less likely to happen, but it doesn't stop it…

>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?

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#48

Post by mothballed »

ceejayoz wrote: post #43
mothballed wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, it did, that's why SCOTUS ruled against it.

SCOTUS does not enjoy papal infallibility. They fuck up. (Or act maliciously, as when Alito invented the new "history and tradition" test.)

Congress fucks up as well. There's as pretty strong argument that "independence" from the executive power vested in the POTUS and legislative branch puts that power in a place not authorized anywhere in the constitution, and for good reason, as the design of the constitution intends elected office to have direct control over powers of congress and the executive.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#49

Post by ocdtrekkie »

wyldberry wrote: post #35
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the Court rules to the center, I think Roberts likes to take it himself or let a liberal Justice write it so it looks like the court is balanced and unified or something. Roberts has lost control of his court and is desperately trying to make it appear legitimate.

Genuinely curious: What does it mean for a Chief Justice to be in control of their court, and of course, for them to be out of control?

So very specifically I've historically read Roberts as a fairly moderate jurist. He has a true romanticism about the neutrality of the court and that it shouldn't be a political body. (This is ridiculous, but anyways.) This has changed as the court has reached a 6/3 bias. When the court was a 5/4, Roberts could swing to the center and bring the majority position with him. But now the far right wing doesn't need his help: The conservative wing can do a 5/4 even with his dissent. So you see Roberts bucking the conservative trend much less, maybe not because he agrees with the court but knows he can't push the outcome to the center.

The other aspect I think in play here is that the current executive branch pretty much just ignores every court order it doesn't like, and the Court can't enforce any ruling it makes, because that's the executive branch's job. I think Roberts knows if the Court pulls against Trump very hard, it could lead to a showdown where Trump just... does what he wants anyways, which would destroy the perceived power of the Court. I think Roberts has tried to dodge a lot of law and a lot of rulings to avoid clear positions on the President which he would, in turn, ignore.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#50

Post by Cider9986 »

catapart wrote: post #18
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #11

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 unconstit…

There's a 94% chance the EO is struck down on polymarket.
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