{"id":283634,"date":"2026-06-29T10:33:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T14:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/29\/us-supreme-court-rules-geofence-warrants-require-constitutional-privacy-protections-us-supreme-court\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T11:05:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T15:05:07","slug":"us-supreme-court-rules-geofence-warrants-require-constitutional-privacy-protections-us-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/29\/us-supreme-court-rules-geofence-warrants-require-constitutional-privacy-protections-us-supreme-court\/","title":{"rendered":"US supreme court rules geofence warrants require constitutional privacy protections | US supreme court"},"content":{"rendered":"

US supreme court rules geofence warrants require constitutional privacy protections | US supreme court<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2026\/jun\/29\/supreme-court-geofence-warrants-case-decision<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-06-29 10:33:00<\/a><\/p>\n

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

The US supreme court has ruled that law enforcement\u2019s use of sprawling warrants that sweep up smartphone location data requires privacy protections under the fourth amendment, in a boost to critics who view their use as an unconstitutional dragnet.<\/p>\n

Justice Elena Kagan wrote the majority opinion.<\/p>\n

The use of geofence warrants is <\/strong>widespread, and gives law enforcement agencies the power to compel tech companies to hand over sensitive cell phone data from people at or near crime scenes. Police agencies and the FBI have used geofence warrants to collect this information from individuals that fall within the radius of a virtual \u201cfence\u201d during <\/strong>a particular timeframe. They aren\u2019t restricted to requesting data for precise targets.<\/p>\n

That has alarmed privacy advocates, who say these sweeping warrants can be overly broad in the area they target, as well as the length of time they cover. \u201cIf the government doesn\u2019t need to \u2026 link something to a crime, it could monitor a protest or an abortion clinic or a gun range or a church or an AA meeting or a doctor\u2019s office,\u201d says Matthew Tokson, a law professor at the University of Utah.<\/p>\n

The Chatrie case focuses on local police\u2019s pursuit of an armed bank robber in Richmond, Virginia. He fled with $195,000. Law enforcement tracked Okello Chatrie down through their use of geofence warrants. Chatrie had opted in to an optional Google \u201clocation history\u201d feature that documented his location every few minutes. He was eventually sentenced to 12 years in prison, after pleading guilty.<\/p>\n

Chatrie\u2019s lawyers argued that this search was overly broad and violated his fourth amendment rights, which protects individuals from \u201cunreasonable search and seizure.\u201d Lawyers said that police\u2019s use of geofence warrants amounted to an official \u201csearch\u201d <\/strong>under the Fourth Amendment, and didn\u2019t meet the constitution\u2019s requirements for one.<\/p>\n

Law enforcement has said they need these geofence warrants to find suspects and witnesses\u2013<\/strong>after…<\/p>\n

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

US supreme court rules geofence warrants require constitutional privacy protections | US supreme court https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2026\/jun\/29\/supreme-court-geofence-warrants-case-decision…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":283635,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/ddb87e813bdb11401cf5abac3654ec9ff5b15d85\/328_0_5001_4002\/master\/5001.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=4dde1080bea475527e46e854344cca12","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-283634","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\/283634"}],"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=283634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":283636,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283634\/revisions\/283636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}