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Federal court rules geofence warrants are unconstitutional:
In another round of increasingly rare good news in the realm of privacy, individual rights and freedom, two separate US federal judges have found geofence warrants to be unconstitutional.
Geofence warrants have been around for some time now. Essentially, it's a new investigative technique wherein law enforcement, rather than surveilling a suspect to discover if they had been at the scene of a crime, they work backwards by identifying everyone that's been at a particular location and surveilling them until they discover which one of them is a possible suspect.
[...] US courts have recently begun accepting that our smartphones hold so much data about us that they should be protected by the fourth amendment, as an extension of our homes.
Three separate unsealed opinions from two federal magistrate judges have come to the same conclusion: that these warrants lack the probable cause and particularity requirements of the fourth amendment.
[...] It's disturbing to think of just how many Americans' constitutional rights would have been violated if the warrant was granted. Even more disturbing is other such warrants possibly getting granted regularly, aside from what information Google willingly hands over to governments.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday September 03 2020, @04:08PM (1 child)
Don't bring a cellphone to the scene of their crime. And everybody else would be well advised to turn off the GPS and the Wifi in their cellphone when they don't need it, as a mitigation strategy to prevent Google from getting a too precise position.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday September 03 2020, @07:51PM
Turning off your Smart phone is the opposite of being Smart.
You should have:
* Smart phone
* Smart headphones
* Smart eyeglasses
* Smart wristwatch
Now that's a Smart criminal.
If you have a dog, get a Smart dog door that is IoT and cloud connected to improve the security of your home. That's Smart.
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