The United States Supreme Court ruled 6-3 Monday to restrict the use of geofence warrants that allow law enforcement to see who was near the scene of a crime using information collected by tech companies.
Authored by Justice Elena Kagan, the majority explained that it was sending the case back to the lower court to determine if the search conducted was “reasonable” under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.
“The Fourth Amendment must, as ever, protect against unjustified government intrusion on the privacy of the individual,” Justice Kagan wrote.
“An individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in records about his cell phone’s location, and police intrude on that constitutionally protected interest when they demand the information—even though for only a limited time, and from a third-party tech company,” wrote Kagan.
As explained by NPR, a geofence warrant involved allowing law enforcement to obtain a warrant requiring a tech company to turn over data identifying any users who were within a certain area at the time a crime was committed.
Attorneys argued in court filings that these warrants violate the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, because they allow law enforcement “to search first and develop suspicions later.”
The government countered these claims by suggesting that users have the option of not handing their data over to tech companies thus leaving it outside the scope of Fourth Amendment protections.
The primary dissent, authored by Justice Samuel Alito and joined in part by Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett, contends that the majority’s opinion “further destabilizes longstanding Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.”
These justices also took issue with the fact that such a major change is being enacted “in an advisory opinion” that they suggest will not actually have an impact on the underlying case.
“I cannot support this irresponsible escapade,” Justice Alito wrote.
In a brief, separate dissent, Justice Barrett clarified that while she disagrees with the concerns raised regarding the Court’s decision to take up the case, she does believe that the defendant in this case had no “reasonable expectation of privacy in data about his public movements that he voluntarily disclosed to Google.”
