Poor titling. The restriction is not in place. Thry have only sent it back to the lower federal court to let them determine if it counts as a 4th amendment search before making a decision. The NPR article is significantly better. https://www.npr.org/2026/06/29/nx-s1-5844697/supreme-court-restricts-use-of-geofence-warrants
If this does come back as a 4th amendment search, this might kill Flock and other fixed are surveillance devices in a really fun way. God, I can only hope. (But realistically I know they won’t restrict shit)
So now LEO’s will just buy the data, instead of getting warrants, right?
No, they can’t obtain the data without a warrant.
That broadly covers every way that information could come to them.
It’s like how the police can’t search your apartment without a warrant even if the landlord voluntarily makes them a copy of the key.
They can. What happens after that depends how rich you are and how corrupt your court is.
The fact we had to have the supreme court rule this is insane to me. “Hey this search is going to violate the privacy of hundreds of people in the search of finding one person, do you think this is ok? Yea defo lets do it”
Because the rich don’t want the government to look at their location data.
It’s crazy that we need rulings to provide basic rights, but sure I guess,
Even if they do require warrants, it still would be done without one.
If they didn’t get a warrant then this ruling means that every court must require that the evidence be suppressed.
A president can promote a scam crypto coin and get away with it. Nothing makes sense anymore.
The President doing illegal things has no bearing on the admissibility of evidence.
The judge decides what is allowed to be used at trial. If the prosecution ignore the judge and presents it anyway then the judge rules the case a mistrial. If the judge allows it then the court of appeal would overturn the ruling.
This doesn’t stop them from illegally obtaining the evidence, but it provides the ruling that prevents it from being used at trial.
Are you actually saying that there are no corrupt judges in Trump’s pocket? If so, you are truly thinking innocently.
Are you asking for help understating what I wrote? Or do you think that sarcastically attacking strawmen of your own creation is an argument?
Corrupt judges and bad decisions are why courts of appeal exist. These courts use multiple judges chosen at random specifically to prevent the kind of collusive behaviour that you’re implying.
Are you asking me to explain why things are not always hunky dory? Just like the mob, people can be sniffed or snuffed out and blackmailed. Corruption will never be prevented when it comes to the higher ups in charge.
Yes, if the world were a John Grisham novel, some nefarious group could blackmail multiple judges across all levels of the appellate provesd, rig the system to ensure they’re all assigned the case (by blackmailing the clerk of clurt) in order to ensure that they would have a chance to show illegally obtained location evidence to the jury, all 12 of whom are also blackmailed (why not?) to prove a person’s phone was at a specific location.
Do you have any other fantasy scenarios that need co-signing?
Also, they’ll get warrants from friendly judges who never ever reject a warrant request.
Good point.
i mean, at least if we make them get the warrants, we have a paper trail of where they are used
We should frame all cases as things the supreme court wouldn’t want done to them. Like know the location of Clarence Thomas on his owner’s yacht.
Except that this administration only gives a shit about what the courts say when they find in their favor…
They can illegally obtain the data all they’d like, this ruling means that the data obtained like that will be suppressed and not allowed to be shown to a jury.
Ignoring that would result in a mistrial and that decision would be upheld all the way up the chain via appeals.
Yeah, but you and I both know once they’ve identified a target, no matter what the means, they’ll use that identification to build a case that doesn’t involve the location information… Arguing “inevitable discovery” the whole way.
And either way, they’ll prosecute.
As you and I both know, a case built on illegally obtained evidence is also illegal.
They can present whatever arguments they’d like and a judge can read the above Supreme Court case, rule that their case is built on illegal evidence and dismiss it. If that judge does not the the judges in the court of appeals can overturn the lower court.
