{"id":236412,"date":"2026-04-27T18:33:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T22:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/27\/us-supreme-court-hears-whether-smartphone-location-data-warrants-infringe-users-privacy-technology\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T19:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T23:05:08","slug":"us-supreme-court-hears-whether-smartphone-location-data-warrants-infringe-users-privacy-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/27\/us-supreme-court-hears-whether-smartphone-location-data-warrants-infringe-users-privacy-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"US supreme court hears whether smartphone location data warrants infringe users\u2019 privacy | Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

US supreme court hears whether smartphone location data warrants infringe users\u2019 privacy | Technology<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2026\/apr\/27\/us-supreme-court-smartphone-location-data-privacy<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-04-27 18:33:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.theguardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n

The US supreme court is considering whether sprawling warrants for smartphone location data infringe on Americans\u2019 privacy rights and violate the constitution.<\/p>\n

Justices heard opening arguments in Chatrie v United States on Monday that concerned law enforcement\u2019s reliance on so-called \u201cgeofence warrants\u201d in difficult cases. The case was originally brought by Okello Chatrie, whose phone location data helped police in Richmond, Virginia, track him down after he robbed a bank at gunpoint and escaped with $195,000 in 2019. Chatrie pleaded guilty to armed robbery and was sentenced to 12 years in prison, but his lawyers argue none of the evidence against him should have been admissible in court.<\/p>\n

A lawyer for the US Department of Justice argued that nearly any actions taken in public while in possession of a smartphone afforded no expectation of privacy.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in movements that anyone could see, that he has opted to allow a third party to analyze for its own purposes,\u201d the US solicitor general, a high-ranking lawyer for Donald Trump\u2019s administration, has argued in legal filings.<\/p>\n

Law enforcement is increasingly demanding that tech companies hand over sensitive phone location data on people at or near a site where a suspected crime occurred \u2013 anyone who falls within the radius of a virtual \u201cfence\u201d. These geofence warrants, rather than specifying their targets, instead compel tech companies to hand over data to police or the FBI on every electronic device in a particular place at a given time.<\/p>\n

Privacy advocates and some legal experts view geofence searches as a dragnet that sweeps up innocent bystanders. \u201cJust because you have a cell phone, should you be subjected to all sorts of law enforcement investigations because of crimes that may have happened in your vicinity?\u201d said Paul Ohm, a law professor at Georgetown University, who submitted an amicus brief in the case. These warrants can lead to an…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US supreme court hears whether smartphone location data warrants infringe users\u2019 privacy | Technology https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2026\/apr\/27\/us-supreme-court-smartphone-location-data-privacy…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":236413,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/d6a50bcf1cf28c48e8515365f8208c744fead315\/815_0_3835_3070\/master\/3835.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=d7b9c46795de5bb6f589f40f3d201c91","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236412"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236412"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":236414,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236412\/revisions\/236414"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}