Supreme court answered one privacy question — then dodged the big one
Supreme court answered one privacy question — then dodged the big one
Publish Date: 2026-06-30 09:00:00
Source Domain: www.washingtonexaminer.com
The Supreme Court ruled Monday in Chatrie v. United States that when law enforcement used a geofence warrant — directing Google to produce location data for every cellphone near a Virginia bank during a 2019 robbery — they conducted a “search” under the Fourth Amendment. By a 6-3 vote, the Court sent the case back to the lower court to determine whether the search was “reasonable.” Justice Kagan, writing for the majority, held that an individual retains a reasonable expectation of privacy in cell phone location records even when a third-party tech company holds them.
The holding matters. What matters more is what the Court left unanswered.
At oral argument, Justice Neil Gorsuch asked the question the majority declined to resolve: if the cloud holds everything — your emails, photos, financial records, and location history — and you “voluntarily” shared all of it with Google, Amazon, or Apple, does the third-party doctrine eliminate Fourth Amendment protection for all of it? The government said yes. Gorsuch found that alarming. He was right.
The third-party doctrine traces to two cases from the 1970s. In United States v. Miller (1976), the Court held that bank customers have no Fourth Amendment protection in records they share with their banks. In Smith v. Maryland (1979), phone numbers dialed — transmitted to the phone company to complete the call — carry no constitutional protection because they were “voluntarily conveyed” to a third party. The doctrine made rough sense when sharing information with a third party was a discrete, deliberate act. That logic doesn’t survive contact with 2026 when sharing data with third parties isn’t a choice you make — it’s the condition of participation in modern economic life.
January 6 is the sharpest illustration of what geofence warrants do at scale. The FBI served Google with a geofence warrant covering location data in and around the Capitol from 2 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. on January 6, 2021….
