Oddbean

Big Win for Freedom: Federal Appeals Court Finds Geofence Warrants Are “Categorically” Unconstitutional Up to one third of all inquires to Google are for user geolocation data. This is where law enforcement asks for the data on all phone users in a given geographic area, because they want to know who might have done a crime. The issue with this is that it violates the fourth amendment, as they are getting a huge amount of other data on other people, completely unrelated to the crime. This is the exact type of stuff we advocate avoiding with Simplified Privacy’s educational materials on DeGoogled Phones, WiFi hotspots, and VoIP. However, it appears we are not the only ones against the practice. In the Fifth Circuit case of the United States v. Smith, the Federal Court ruled that geofence warrants, which involve blanket requests for all user data in a given geographic area, are unconstitutional and violate the 4th amendment. Now will this stop the practice? Maybe, but I wouldn’t cancel your VoIP subscription yet.

Thought this was bound to happen. Good news for privacy! I haven't read the finding but based on your summary, it sounds like one could in theory limit the scope of a geofence warrant to physical areas where any device present would likely belong to a witness, suspect, or victim; Where identifying them would be relevant to the case and the search would not involve collecting data of "innocent" devices. For example, I recall a case once where a remote energy infrastructure site was broken into and items stolen. It belonged to a private business, some sort of wind energy business IIRC. The only road leading into it was private property and no customers would have a reason to go out there. The crime was done in the middle of the evening too. So during the commission of the crime, anyone out there at the site could be assumed to be the suspect or at least a suspect of criminal trespass on private property. With a few cell sites covering the area and a WiFi router at the location, a geofence warrant of the area made sense. But the conditions above are not the norm and a lot of geofence warrants would cover areas of populated cities or high trafficked roads.