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 Runaway1956 on Thursday September 03 2020, @09:30PM
That was a case of slip-shod lazy police work. There are cameras located at most point of sale points. If the cops had perused the video at a dozen or more locations, they could have developed a lead from that alone. Publish the bad guy's image on television and the internet, along with a reward for information, and something is likely to come back soon. Then, they get a warrant to search that guy's home, place of business, workshop, whatever.
Instead of doing police work, the police want the tech companies to do all their work. That is a real problem, IMHO.