Friday August 10th U.S Court of Appeals for the fifth Circuit which covers the states of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, found that geofencing warrants are prohibited by the United States Forth Amendment, an Amendment that protect against searches that are unwarranted.
These Geofence Warrants had allowed Police to essentially draw a shape on a map, like over a crime scene, and demand Google or other company that collect location data to surrender data of all devices that are within that location within a specific point in time.
This was considered to broad and therefore unconstitutional by many critics. This all came about in February 2018 when a police officer used a geofencing warrant to identify the individuals suspected in the robbery of a U.S Postal worker in Mississippi.
Interesting the Fourth Circuit which covers the states of North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia found in a criminal case last month, that it Geofence Warrant are in fact constitutional. The court ruled that geofence warrants do not count as a search and as a result those warrants are allowed within those states.
There are many ways in which these rulings can be interpreted, and it may continue to be some times for many other Circuit courts to come to a conclusion that would be recognized on a national level as laws continue to catch up in a digital age.
In the meantime, tech companies can choose to limit the amount of data that is collected to reduce the amount of data that is given in states where geofence warrants are considered constitutional. An example of this is when Google said during a statement last year that it would begin storing users’ location data on the person’s device which would make geofence warrants less useful.
References:
TechCrunch: “US appeals court rules geofence warrants are unconstitutional” (Link)
TechCrunch: “Google moves to end geofence warrants, a surveillance problem it largely created” (Link)
Leave a Reply