The US Supreme Court has ruled that law enforcement's acquisition of historical location data through geofence warrants constitutes a Fourth Amendment search, marking a major victory for digital privacy.
While the Court stopped short of declaring geofence warrants unconstitutional, it held that police must satisfy the Constitution's warrant requirements before obtaining users' location history from technology companies.
The case arose from the prosecution of Okello Chatrie, who was identified as a suspect in a 2019 Virginia bank robbery after investigators obtained a geofence warrant compelling Google to search its Location History database. Police requested anonymized location records for every device within a 150-meter radius of the credit union during a one-hour period surrounding the robbery. Through a three-stage process, investigators progressively narrowed the results from 19 anonymous devices to three identified Google users, one of whom was Chatrie.
Google's former Location History service, which the Court noted recorded a user's location approximately every two minutes using GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth beacons, cell towers, and IP address data, provided investigators with an exceptionally detailed record of users' movements. According to the opinion, the data could pinpoint a device within roughly 20 meters and even estimate elevation to determine which floor of a building a person occupied.
The Supreme Court concluded that this level of tracking creates a reasonable expectation of privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment.
“An individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell-phone location information,” Justice Kagan wrote, concluding that police conduct a Fourth Amendment search when they compel Google to disclose such records.
Extending the Carpenter precedent
The ruling significantly expands the Court's privacy jurisprudence established in Carpenter v. United States, which held that historical cell-site location information (CSLI) obtained from wireless carriers is protected under the Fourth Amendment.
The Court found that Google's Location History is even more revealing than CSLI because it records locations far more frequently, with greater precision, and effectively functions as a personal diary of an individual's movements. The majority emphasized that Location History allows investigators to retrospectively reconstruct where anyone was at virtually any point in time, enabling what it described as “tireless and absolute surveillance.”
The government argued that the limited duration of the records sought in this case, roughly two hours, distinguished it from Carpenter, which involved seven days of location data. The Court rejected that argument, holding that Fourth Amendment protections do not depend on whether authorities collect a small or large amount of protected information.
The majority also rejected the government's reliance on the longstanding “third-party doctrine,” under which individuals generally lose privacy protections for information voluntarily shared with companies. The Court found that users do not meaningfully consent to government access simply by enabling smartphone features or using Google's services, noting that Google frequently encouraged users to activate Location History without fully explaining how the data could later be disclosed to law enforcement.
Geofence warrants survive, for now
The Court did not invalidate geofence warrants outright. Instead, it ruled only that obtaining Location History data constitutes a search subject to Fourth Amendment protections. Whether a particular geofence warrant is constitutional will depend on whether it satisfies the traditional requirements of probable cause and particularity.
Because the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals previously concluded that no search occurred, it never fully evaluated whether the warrant used against Chatrie met those constitutional standards. The Supreme Court vacated the lower court's judgment and remanded the case for that analysis.
Broader implications for law enforcement
The decision is expected to reshape how investigators obtain historical location data from technology companies.
Geofence warrants became increasingly popular during the late 2010s because they allowed investigators to identify potential suspects by drawing a virtual boundary around a crime scene and compelling companies to identify devices present during a specified time window. Google, the primary recipient of such warrants, reported receiving nearly 11,000 geofence requests in 2020 after processing fewer than 1,000 just two years earlier.
The Court also noted that Google's practices have changed since the events underlying the case. In 2025, the company moved Location History storage from its cloud infrastructure to users' devices, stating that it can no longer respond to traditional geofence warrants seeking that data because it no longer possesses centralized records.
Although the ruling focuses specifically on Google's Location History, its reasoning could influence future cases involving location information collected by other technology companies and mobile applications that retain detailed historical movement data.
Leave a Reply