Chatrie v. United States - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org

We don’t get a lot of privacy wins. Ya know? I’ll take whatever we can get.

I linked the wiki page for this court case. As of me typing now, page hasn’t been updated with the court decision. Prob will be soon. If you want the rawdog court document, it’s here.

TLDR. SCOTUS just decided that geofence warrants require 4th amendment protection. For the non-USA peeps, 4A is protection against gov searches without a warrant granted with probable cause. The court decided that since everyone now carries a smartphone everywhere, and loc data is highly personal, police geofence requests require a judicial warrant. In the same way one is required for the police to search your home.

Before anybody goes off about how “this doesn’t matter”… This does not restrict commercial data collection. Even so, it does matter. It is a step in a good direction, and will have real world impacts. It might even change the landscape around Flocks. Another positive step happened a while ago, in Carpenter vs the United States, about historical cell site location data.

  • Madison420@lemmy.world
    3·
    2 days ago

    Yes, searching it for a specific person would require a warrant and given how their typically gained it would be a series a warrants that narrow down areas then people.

    The government needs a warrant to gain it for any specific person. They can however get a warrant for a large area, narrow down suspects by Geo data and then get a warrant for whomever to get pii to find out who’s device it is.

    • logging_strict@programming.dev
      1·
      1 day ago

      You misunderstand, the gov’t cannot receive large area data at all. The judge having accepted probable cause evidence would grant warrant for specific individuals and possibly limited people within their network. No more!

      The companies would then provide only that data and no more. So the search would be conducted by the company and not just sending all the data to the police. Cuz the warrant will not allow that, there will likely be a judicial review, or good bye any change of a conviction. The police will also not ask for dragnet data again cuz that’ll be inadmissible or come out in discovery.

      Doubt companies can or would refuse to filter the data.

      • Madison420@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 day ago

        No. Wide area anonymous geo fenced warrants are still kosher there just can’t be pii to reveal anyone without a warrant based on ras or pc.

        This ruling specifically said the issue was when they moved from wide area anonymous information to requesting and gaining pii that would require ras or pc to get a warrant or doesn’t matter if the company that holds it is volunteering it upon simple request.