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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

#91

Post by pseudo0 »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #65
autoexec wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

one of the more fun things I learned during criminal court in Texas is that the absence of forensic evidence cannot exonerate an individual. The prosecutor and the judge covered that despite not having any forensic evidence, the jury would still be expected to be able to convict the defendant. If you weren't OK with that you weren't eligible to serve on a jury.

They are trying to avoid a situation where you end up with one juror who watches a lot of CSI and insists that they need forensic evidence to convict, despite having a dozen eye-witnesses. If a juror cannot imagine a circumstance where the evidence could be beyond a reasonable doubt based on non-forensic evidence, then they aren't suitable to be a juror.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#92

Post by skybrian »

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?

Google Maps switched from storing location history in the cloud to storing it on your phone for "better privacy," so the geofencing warrant used in this case wouldn't work anymore.

However, other apps might record location history in the cloud, so there might be an impact there?

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#93

Post by ocdtrekkie »

dmitrygr wrote: post #89
mjburgess wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CJ decides who writes the opinion of the majority if in the majority, and the dissent if in the dissent. Its the job of the CJ to bring sides together in clear oppositions, and "horse trade" between bits and pieces of a decision so that its clear where a majority/minority lie. The CJ's foremost political role is to ensure the judicial branch of government is seen as a politically legitimate institution which wiel…

> They govern by consent of the other branches, and that's trivial to take away That is entirely not at all what the us constitution says

Yes but the Constitution has to actually be followed for it to work. The Supreme Court has no military or police, if the President chooses to disobey them and the military and police follow the President's orders... there isn't much the Court can do about it. The system works when everyone executes the system faithfully, but that isn't meaningfully happening right now.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#94

Post by TZubiri »

"armed bank robber in Richmond, Virginia. He fled with $195,000. Law enforcement tracked Okello Chatrie down through their use of geofence warrants. Chatrie had opted in to an optional Google “location history” feature that documented his location every few minutes. He was eventually sentenced to 12 years in prison, after pleading guilty."

I will never understand how some people look at this stuff and immediately think that what we need is more EHLO doubly encrypted VPNs with DNS over HTTPS and paid with crypto5.0

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#95

Post by kube-system »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #69
ceejayoz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's implausible that an Echo would have an internal list of trusted Bluetooth devices and their last date of connectivity.

The original claim is: > all the bluetooth MAC addresses that was seen by the Echo device in the home around the time of the murders which is just not how this stuff works. I'd believe it if, say, debug-level logs were being recorded locally. But that would be an incredibly stupid way to burn through your flash storage. But that's besides the point. A record of the last date of connectivity for trusted devices is an…

Amazon used Echo devices for all kinds of invasive purposes other than advertised. Tracking the bluetooth identifiers of nearby devices is small potatoes compared to other things they've done:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Sidewalk

One of those purposes was to explicity use Echos for tracking purposes:

> Amazon’s partnership will allow it beef up its tracking network, called Sidewalk, by letting Tile and Level devices tap into the Bluetooth networks created by millions of its Echo products.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/07/amazon-partners-with-tile-to...

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#96

Post by thenewnewguy »

TheJoeMan wrote: post #82
petcat wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it is reasonable to have your privacy in a public place I don't think it's reasonable to have privacy in a public place. All other arguments follow from there. What do you think should be "private" when you step outside your home?

If I run into someone at the grocery store, I can remember "oh I saw them yesterday" if the Police interview me. If I start writing down/logging every time I saw that person at the grocery store and plotting it out, I would consider that "crossing the line". A Flock camera that receives BOLO's for known-criminals and immediately flags captures in real-time is different than tracking every person going everywhere with…

What if the grocery store has a security camera pointed at the door that records 24/7? Should they not be allowed to do that?

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#97

Post by twoodfin »

plagiarist wrote: post #79
ChrisKnott wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In retrospect, the part I quoted is very unclear for what I intended. I should have added more. What's hard to believe is the data is apparently still allowed in the case. Like... how?

Because the police got a warrant, exactly as this decision now says was required.

And there's something called the "good-faith exception" for unreasonable warrants: If you get a warrant where it's required (or in this case, where the government tried to argue it wasn't!), and a magistrate grants that warrant, it's a legal warrant so long as all participants were acting in good faith, believing their actions to be legal. Even if a court later finds that the warrant should not have been issued for one reason or another.

This is why Alito was grouchy during oral arguments and in his opinion that the Court took the case in the first place. The police got a warrant, acting in good faith. It allowed them to identify the criminal, who was later convicted. It wasn't clear that any decision by the court on the warrant requirement would have anything but an advisory effect, and SCOTUS doesn't do advisory opinions by longstanding tradition.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#98

Post by soulofmischief »

petcat wrote: post #74
arlattimore wrote: post #70

If it is reasonable to have your privacy in a public place, does this mean that products like Flock which indiscriminately violate your privacy would now require a warrant for law enforcement to access (currently they do not)?

> If it is reasonable to have your privacy in a public place I don't think it's reasonable to have privacy in a public place. All other arguments follow from there. What do you think should be "private" when you step outside your home?

I would like to visit the park without several large cameras staring me down at every junction now.

I would like to go to various establishments, or maybe even political meetups, without being profiled by insurance agents and law enforcement officers. Especially now that it seems simply attending a political meeting could land me decades in prison.

I would, as the US Supreme Court just reaffirmed is my right, not like to have my location continuously tracked immediately upon leaving my home via such a camera network. Otherwise this entire ruling is just subverted by adding a few extra steps.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#99

Post by vkou »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #65
autoexec wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

one of the more fun things I learned during criminal court in Texas is that the absence of forensic evidence cannot exonerate an individual. The prosecutor and the judge covered that despite not having any forensic evidence, the jury would still be expected to be able to convict the defendant. If you weren't OK with that you weren't eligible to serve on a jury.

Five (or fifty-five) people giving unambiguous eyewitness testimony that clearly identified the defendant and the crime he committed, with them all keeping their stories consistent under hostile cross-examination has exactly zero forensic evidence... but if you, as a juror, found all of that persuasive, it sounds like it should be enough to convict.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#100

Post by dmitrygr »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #93
dmitrygr wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They govern by consent of the other branches, and that's trivial to take away That is entirely not at all what the us constitution says

Yes but the Constitution has to actually be followed for it to work. The Supreme Court has no military or police, if the President chooses to disobey them and the military and police follow the President's orders... there isn't much the Court can do about it. The system works when everyone executes the system faithfully, but that isn't meaningfully happening right now.

> The system works when everyone executes the system faithfully, but that isn't meaningfully happening

You are entirely right, we really need to prosecute presidents who do not follow SCOTUS rulings, like [1] and [2]

[1] https://www.wsj.com/opinion/joe-biden-student-debt-forgivene...

[2] https://www.cato.org/blog/obama-administration-ignores-supre...

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