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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

#231

Post by simoncion »

thenewnewguy wrote: post #96
TheJoeMan wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Should they not be allowed to do that?

If that camera system is closed-circuit and its data is restricted to the premises they should be permitted to do that.

If the data from that camera system [0] can be removed from the premises by anything less than a search warrant or court order, then no, they should not be permitted to do that.

I know this isn't how the relevant laws work now, but they haven't been adequately updated to account for radical changes in the ability for companies to perform mass surveillance.

[0] ...whether raw or "processed" by -say- a "customer analytics" software... [1]

[1] Want a count of the day's customers? Check register receipts. Want to know what displays are most popular? Ask your employees, or employ someone to take notes. etc, etc, etc.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#232

Post by ButlerianJihad »

stinkbeetle wrote: post #190
kube-system wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A one hour period and 150 meter radius of a bank surrounded by cornfields? sure. A one hour period and 150 meter radius of a bank surrounded by high-rises and public transit? no.

I think you might be confusing what the issue is. As we see in this case, the (likely) person in this case was actually found from the relatively small number of people who fit this criteria, so police were (likely) right to suspect these people. The issue is not who the police may or may not suspect. it is about reasonable expectation of privacy. If they had obtained this exact same list of people who were near that…

> reasonable expectation of privacy

That cracks me up honestly.

Imagine in the 1980s if every citizen was compelled to carry a ghetto blaster with 100W amplifier and speakers that relentlessly blared our SSN, phone number, home address and bank accounts.

In biblical times, of course, lepers were legally compelled to identify themselves and warn others with analogous methods.

Now today we all voluntarily carry around radio transceivers that loudly blare unique identifiers, perpetually, omnidirectionally, to anyone and anything that will listen.

Wired connections are so aggressively deprecated that we’re also perpetually exchanging every private conversation, and every secret SMS MFA code, and every DNS lookup, over public airwaves.

It’s not our fault and it’s beyond our control, but if you carry such a ghetto blaster, don’t cry to us about expecting privacy.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#233

Post by expedition32 »

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.

This is why crimes used to have prosecution time limits. Nobody expected eye witness accounts to surface after 40 years. But DNA is eternal.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#234

Post by DiscourseFan »

expedition32 wrote: post #233
jjk166 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is why crimes used to have prosecution time limits. Nobody expected eye witness accounts to surface after 40 years. But DNA is eternal.

DNA is not eternal, but neither is anyone's memory trustworthy for that long.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#235

Post by protocolture »

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,…

> 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.

Aww look at that hangdog expression. They earned a treat. Go on, have some unconstitutional evidence.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#236

Post by Spooky23 »

brookst wrote: post #119
sidewndr46 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the slippery slope that this goes down. The criminal charges were way too low, given the alleged actions. The state admitted it had absolutely no forensic evidence. The judge was perfectly fine with this and selecting a jury that was OK convicting in this circumstance. This pretty quickly pretty us down a path of "you're guilty of at least one crime since you've been indicted, maybe a more seri…

Does that mean that every single conviction from before the days of forensic evidence is necessarily invalid? If the argument is that forensic evidence decreases uncertainty, well, it certainly doesn’t eliminate uncertainty. Convicting anyone of anything is a slippery slope. The only way to be truly sure is to never do it, ever.

The standard of both investigations and the effectiveness of mostly part time police were pretty low. Most police were elected or appointed officials with deputized staff. The levels of training and professionalism were poor.

Why do you think many places would execute petty thieves? So few were caught generally speaking the punishment had to be severe.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#237

Post by simoncion »

microgpt wrote: post #66

> Chatrie had opted in to an optional Google “location history” feature that documented his location every few minutes. Google removed this feature last year because they were tired of dealing with these warrants. Now (Google says) your devices each store their own location history without centralisation.

> Now (Google says) your devices each store their own location history without centralisation.

...I smell a "backdoor" that's in the shape of the "Locate my device" and similar such systems. Unless there's no Android subsystem that will dredge up and present info about where a phone has been, then this demand seems totally plausible:

"We know that you can cause a device to report its historical location information. Cause all of the devices that were within area X between times T and G to report their positions during that time to us, the police. Here's our warrant."

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#238

Post by protocolture »

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.

If the cops believe hard enough anything is legal.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#239

Post by Spooky23 »

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.

No.

Parallel construction means they have an illegal bugging device in the courthouse bathroom, and use a conversation that you have with your attorney to identify a witness. Then they independently arrest the witness for something and pressure them to testify.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#240

Post by bofaGuy »

anigbrowl wrote: post #195
seplox wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the ruling, the exposure of your location history is the automatic price of conventional cell-phone usage—which, just as Carpenter noted, is a "pervasive and insistent part of daily life." If we can't step out of our houses or drive to the doctor without that fact getting placed into a searchable database, then I'd argue that it qualifies as a "pervasive and insistent part of daily life."

You are missing the point. It's not that Flock cameras are not intrusive (they are, I fully agree) but that your contract with the cell service company gives you some legal standing to claim you were injured. If your municipality erects flock cameras and you don't like them, you don't have standing in the same way because a) you are not a customer of flock with contractual rights that can be enforced, and b) elected…

This guy works for flock
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