US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections • Hacker News Board

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#271

Post by broken-kebab » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 2:00 PM UTC

jjk166 wrote: post #173

DiscourseFan wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn its almost as if juries exist to act as the sovereign so the violence which sustains the law can be vested in a general public that cannot be held accountable as a whole, similarly to how at least one member of a firing squad always has a blank.

Or perhaps the standards of evidence established for a pre-industrial society when eye-witness testimony was the best that could reasonably be achieved is not necessarily the optimal system for a digital society where everyone carries a high definition video camera in their pocket at all times.

But in what way do you believe these standards are inadequate? Video from phones is used in courts when available and admissible.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#272

Post by gwbas1c » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 2:02 PM UTC

LatteLazy wrote: post #270

Obviously there should be limits but what should they be? I actually don’t think asking for phone ids for 30min before and after an event within a limited distance IS overly broad. The fact it only returned 19 initial IDs kind of shows that no? Equally, knowing someone has been in or near a bank is not particularly intrusive. It’s not like searching who visited a lawyers office or a sexual health clinic etc. So would…

> Obviously there should be limits but what should they be?

A warrant made by a neutral court; that is specifically narrow enough to only target people who could be reasonable suspects.

I'm having trouble understanding what the court did rule on, because IMO this is a totally reasonable use of data. It was very limited in scope, both in time and location.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#273

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 2:10 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #265

pseudo0 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Reminds me of the Norm Macdonald bit where he says he would not convict someone based on DNA evidence. The punch line is something like "I'm not a scientist, what do I know about DNA?"

[deleted]

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#274

Post by cucumber3732842 » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 2:23 PM UTC

kube-system wrote: post #266

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A one hour period and 150 meter radius of a bank surrounded by high-rises and public transit? no. Two weeks of no leads and that no is gonna start looking an awful lot like a yes.

Picking 1000+ people at random doesn’t fix that problem

Surely one of those thousand can be made to look guilty enough for a prosecution. Solves the problem of looking like you're doing something real well.

The system does not care about prosecuting criminals. It cares about prosecuting people for crimes. While it may prefer to prosecute criminals for their specific crimes that is by no means a hard requirement.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#275

Post by alphawhisky » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 2:30 PM UTC

ascotan wrote: post #268

The implications are far reaching beyond cell phones. any service that stores location data for it's user is subject to 4th amendment expectations _regardless_ of an opt-in. The court specifically rejected the argument that by opting-in the user is abrogating their privacy rights. If you centrally store location data you have an obligation to protect that data under the 4th amendment as private and would require a wa…

Don't forget that beyond exposing your right to privacy from the government, this info is basically a sitting duck for bad actors outside of government, too. I wonder if these companies would be held accountable if the privacy stealing was from the other end. Probably not.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#276

Post by Edman274 » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 2:32 PM UTC

ecshafer wrote: post #191

sixothree wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's extreme to expect them disclose "donations"?

Calling part of the government illegitimate is a very slippery slope to justifying trying to overthrow said government. You can say they are corrupt, you can disagree with policies, but saying illegitimate is cause for extreme responses.

Do you always judge the validity of a statement according to the implications of it being true, or do you get to do it just this once as a treat? Further, how does saying a court is "corrupt" not call for "extreme measures" but referring to it as "illegitimate" does? What's the meaningful difference?

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#277

Post by thephyber » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 2:36 PM UTC

Brendinooo wrote: post #264

sidewndr46 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mean...yeah? If someone commits a crime and ten people in the room say they were also in the room and that person did it, that shouldn't get thrown out because the suspect didn't leave a fingerprint.

I think he’s saying that if the 10 people witnessed a murder via gunshot that it would be mighty suspicious if the state didn’t bother to bring any forensic evidence of the shooting to court and instead relied solely on those eyewitness testimonies. At some point the absence of forensic evidence might look more like a deliberate attempt to keep exculpatory evidence out of reach of the defendant than a good faith attempt to prosecute.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#278

Post by alex_young » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 2:36 PM UTC

ascotan wrote: post #268

The implications are far reaching beyond cell phones. any service that stores location data for it's user is subject to 4th amendment expectations _regardless_ of an opt-in. The court specifically rejected the argument that by opting-in the user is abrogating their privacy rights. If you centrally store location data you have an obligation to protect that data under the 4th amendment as private and would require a wa…

The 4th amendment protects people from unreasonable searches by the government. It does not require businesses to do anything special. There are plenty of great reasons to, and even other legal requirements to, protect and limit information gathered by businesses about individuals, but the 4th isn’t one of them.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#279

Post by superxpro12 » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 2:42 PM UTC

harimau777 wrote: post #130

dylan604 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this particular judge didn't for whatever reasoning, but judges definitely prevent a prosecutor from introducing evidence based on how it was collected. This is why concepts like "fruit of poisonous tree" and "parallel construction" exist.

Doesn't parallel construcction mean that judges actually don't care how evidence was collected? They can't possibly care that much if they are fine with a fig leaf like parallel construction.

Basically... yeah.

It's using illegally obtained evidence (like an NSA wiretap) to point the detectives in the right direction they would have otherwise never probabilistic-ly searched.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#280

Post by superxpro12 » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 2:43 PM UTC

ChrisKnott wrote: post #46

plagiarist wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [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.

"Sorry we broke the law, but its ok this one time because it would be detrimental to the case".

I mean... slippery slope? Just because they were sincere about it doesnt make it magically ok to use the illegal evidence.