Supreme Court Hearing Arguments About Legalities of Police Using Cellphone Location Data
The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing a case that looks at how the latest technological advancements should be allowed to interact with the constitutional protection of a person's rights. Read on for the details of this case, and what it could mean for the future.
Supreme Court Considering Legality of Requests for Cellphone Location Data
On the afternoon of May 20, 2019, an armed robber walked into a bank in Midlothian, Virginia, demanding that a manager open a safe. The man walked out of the Call Federal Credit Union with $195,000.
Law enforcement officials worked feverishly to try to determine the robber's identity. The detective in charge of the case was led to Okello Chatrie as the suspect due to data obtained from Google about smartphone users near the bank at the time of the crime. A federal judge allowed the arrest to happen by approving a "geofence warrant," giving police officers the authority to seek information without a specific suspect at hand.
While Google had initially identified 19 potential suspects, the detective narrowed the search to Chatrie. The phone had the Google location history setting enabled, allowing law enforcement to zero in on him as the suspect.
Chatrie was eventually sentenced to nearly 12 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges of armed robbery and brandishing a firearm. However, Chatrie appealed the issue to the Supreme Court, questioning whether the request to Google for information violated his right to be free from unlawful searches and seizures, a right guaranteed to Americans under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution.
The recent two-hour oral argument signaled that the justices will at least conclude that a search took place. Should this hold true, it would reject the argument from the U.S. Department of Justice that a warrant was not needed even though the detectives had obtained one.
It is possible that the highest court in the land will also look at whether the warrant was specific enough to be legal. This examination could serve to provide guidance to justices on future warrant parameters.
Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh was one of the justices who conceded that a search did take place. However, he did not appear to be overly concerned about the legality of the warrant.
This is not the first time that the Supreme Court has had to rule on similar questions regarding how the Fourth Amendment should apply to advancements in technology. Other cases have revolved around GPS tracking devices, wiretaps, and thermal imaging. For instance, a similar case in 2017 found that warrants are required to determine location information from data derived from cellphone towers.
The Chatrie case is different from the 2017 case in that it encompasses a broader and more open-ended search. Privacy advocates call this a dragnet that seeks out information from hundreds of likely innocent people. For example, a geofence warrant was used to identify supporters of President Donald Trump at the January 6 riots on Capitol Hill.
According to privacy rights advocates, government officials could use this permission to infringe upon the rights of Americans to free speech if the Supreme Court rules that geofence searches do not need a warrant.
About This Week's Hearing
The justices signaled that there were widespread privacy concerns about the federal and local governments being able to search through large amounts of data to hone in on suspects. Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned that “data will follow you to just about anywhere,” giving the example that it could be used to identify people visiting a brothel or a cannabis store. Other justices noted that there were many sensitive places that people might not want as part of their history, noting abortion clinics as one example.
Justice Neil Gorsuch said a ruling in favor of the government would mean that it would not need a warrant to investigate who was at a political rally, a demonstration, or a church service, regardless of whether a crime was being investigated. Justice Amy Coney Barrett quipped that she needed to check her location service settings, even though she was not going to commit any crimes.
On the other side of the argument, Adam Unikowsky, Chatrie's attorney, was on the receiving end of skeptical questions from the justices. Some of the justices pointed out that Chatrie had voluntarily shared his location history. For instance, Chief Justice John Roberts asked why Chatrie did not just "flick it off" if he did not want to share that sensitive information. Roberts noted that the only reason the government was able to access the information was that he made it public.
Similarly, the Justice Department is arguing that citizens should not expect this level of privacy if they voluntarily share it with Google. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued in court papers that the warrant was lawful simply because law enforcement authorities had "probable cause to believe that Google had information that would help identify the cellphone-using robber."
It should be noted that Google has changed its storage polices since the time of this crime. Location history is now stored on the individual devices rather than on Google servers. However, the case could still deliver far-reaching ramifications throughout the legal landscape.
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