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US Supreme Court Reviews Police Use of Cell Location Data to Find Criminals

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/27/us/politics/supreme-court-cell-data-geofence.html
62•unethical_ban•1h ago

Comments

mothballed•56m ago
With parallel construction on the menu, this is largely academic. There is zero percent chance police and those who profit from their patronage will give up cell location sweeps.
Detrytus•19m ago
You cannot do a parallel construction if the telecom operator refuses to share data with you in the first place. And if SCOTUS makes the right decision here they will have legal grounds to refuse.
superkuh•50m ago
I've been listening to this live and it's clear how Kavenaugh will vote regardless of the validity of the arguments. His mind is set and he's well into coming up with barely related hypotheticals introducing exigency into a case where there was none (the geofencing request for spying on a large group of people was done a week after the crime occured).
ceejayoz•25m ago
SCOTUS has been this way for a while now.

They start with the desired decision and work backwards to justify it.

rayiner•16m ago
You're presupposing there's a valid argument for the other side. The text of the fourth amendment clearly connects the scope of privacy to property rights:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Cell location data belongs to AT&T and Verizon, not the accused individual. As to such third-party data, there's a general principle rooted in Roman law that third parties can be compelled to provide documents in their possession to aid a court proceeding: https://commerciallore.com/2015/06/04/a-brief-history-of-sub... ("In an early incarnation of mandatory minimum sentencing there were only two offences that automatically attracted the death penalty, treason and failing to answer a subpoena. Subpoenas as a tool of justice were considered so important that failing to answer it was a most egregious violation of civic duty. A person accused of murder may or may not be guilty, but if a person refused to answer a subpoena then they were seen as denying Jupiter’s justice itself.").

Those principles were incorporated into what's called the third-party doctrine half a century ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine. But by then it was already an ancient principle.

superkuh•9m ago
Ah, you're a bit confused about the case the court is hearing. This is explcitly not about telco basestation records. It is about the records for location data recorded on the smart phones of individuals. GPS recorded on their personal property, not multi-lateration from telco owned third party property. It's all very accessible if you give it a listen. It's streaming live on youtube.
unethical_ban•4m ago
This is not about local storage. It's about location data gathered from apps and phone OS operators, which is much more akin to telco records than confiscating everyone's phone to look for evidence.
rayiner•2m ago
[delayed]
JumpCrisscross•8m ago
> there's a general principle rooted in Roman law

There goes my fucking morning :P

triceratops•2m ago
Well this court has never overturned decisions made 50 years ago.
unethical_ban•39m ago
My biggest gripe is with the idea that any data shared with a third party is not subject to privacy.

With cameras going up everywhere, operated by the government and with AI enabled, I wonder if geofencing is the biggest privacy threat we have.

cucumber3732842•23m ago
>With cameras going up everywhere, operated by the government and with AI enabled, I wonder if geofencing is the biggest privacy threat we have.

There's a cynical joke in the refrigeration/hvac industry to the tune of "it's good for the environment as long as DuPont has a monopoly on it/the 3rd world isn't making it" in reference to refrigerants' reliable pattern of being identified as bad for the environment and get regulated away right as they and the equipment that uses them become cheap.

Geofencing warrants and cell location data collection give me the same sort of vibes.

ck2•36m ago
if geofencing for all people in the area of a crime becomes legal

well then we know everyone who went to Epstein Island from their cellphone records

Congress must subpoena them ALL

especially the one that went all the way back to Trump Tower, who was it?

https://www.wired.com/video/watch/we-tracked-every-visitor-t...

reader9274•29m ago
What's the difference between police looking up geofence data for the bank before and after a robbery to see who was there, and checking the bank's outdoor cameras to see what license plates were there?
Alive-in-2025•24m ago
The difference is ubiquitous surveillance, which is well known to lead to false positives and inhibits freedom and protest. A world where we are all under surveillance and people actually want to increase it is not a free world.
gravypod•22m ago
One would be scope. There's a big difference between a security camera next to a secure facility (bank, police evidence facility, school) and a 1 mi radius circle around that facility. Security cameras around a bank only track stuff within a field of view from the bank. A cell geofence could be millions of people if it's drawn in midtown.

Another would be incentives. There's no reason to collect cell location data for everyone if you aren't able to use it for anything. I think just the fact that we are all monitored constantly is its own violation of our rights. We should have laws banning these practices.

gruez•20m ago
>Security cameras around a bank only track stuff within a field of view from the bank. A cell geofence could be millions of people if it's drawn in midtown.

Given the ubiquity of security cameras they can just canvas local businesses and ask them to give it up. Given that warrants are involved, they can't even refuse.

gravypod•19m ago
Yes! That would be fantastic! They would need to approach many people, each having the ability to question the motivation! Or, they would need to convince a judge and obtain a warrant.

This is the disaggregation of power of surveillance.

cestith•10m ago
A business can refuse a warrant, but it takes a legal response in court. Their attorneys need to convince a judge the warrant isn’t necessary - that it causes a bigger burden on them than the benefit to the public. Most businesses will just comply because it’s not in their interests to spend time and money on it.

Sometimes a business will challenge a court order if it’s about their own customers, employees, owners, or business dealings. The information requested should be relevant to the investigation, minimal to be helpful, and create as little burden on the business as is practical.

Also, if you’re not the subject of the investigation it’s often a subpoena rather than a warrant. There are major differences between these types of order in the US. A subpoena is an order to produce the evidence. A warrant is an order that allows law enforcement to seize it, using force if needed. As someone who has dealt with law enforcement requests for business data about customers quite a bit in the past, it’s often a simple request first and a subpoena otherwise.

rayiner•10m ago
Here's the text of the fourth amendment. Could you explain how "scope" and "incentives" are relevant distinguishing factors under that?

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

As relevant here, there's two pieces. The threshold requirement is some sort of ownership. The right exists with respect to "their persons, houses, papers, and effects." Assuming digital data constitutes "papers," the accused has to show that it's "their" papers. The hypothetical you're responding to compares the bank's camera footage with the cell phone company's location information. Those seem indistinguishable for that prong.

You have a reasonable argument that "scope" and "incentives" are relevant to the second prong of what's "unreasonable." But you don't get there if you don't get past the first prong, right?

wak90•2m ago
Has anything changed since the sacred texts were written or we just going to keep acting as though we can never adjust the laws
cestith•8m ago
Well, one is a search and seizure of data about a great deal more people from a third party that is not the victim.
sega_sai•24m ago
From the article: "Google says it stopped responding to geofence warrants last year, because the company no longer stores such data and instead keeps location data on each user’s device. But law enforcement has made geofence requests of other tech companies, including Apple, Lyft, Snapchat, Uber, Microsoft and Yahoo"

That explains the changes Google did to the Timeline and why you can't see it in the browser anymore. That is great from them actually.

tucnak•18m ago
Google never gets credit for shit like this, or their results in zero-knowledge maths and implementations, which are genuine public service beyond immediate productization.
idle_zealot•14m ago
From a factual standpoint it's good to acknowledge that pro-privacy work. From a standpoint of overall evaluating the actions, goals, incentives, and impacts of the company, they mean basically nothing. They are a surveillance advertising company, they will never, and can never, have a positive impact on privacy or human rights. To do so would destroy them.
binkHN•8m ago
Completely concur with this, though I do miss being able to browse for places in Google Maps and easily see when I was last there. This functionality disappeared when my location information went local only.
jauntywundrkind•23m ago
There's a nice map on Bluesky of what area of data Google is being asked to hand over. To be honest it's not actually huge. Personally though, that feels like not a great safeguard, not enough to make me ok with this. https://bsky.app/profile/audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app/post/3...

Worth noting that Google has changed its practice since 2019, supposedly, to keep location data on device, not accessible to them. However I have little doubt the cellphone carriers are also available to provide this data. https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/5/24172204/google-maps-delet...

Governments rapidly turning data into a liability. Data is the new oil is out, data is the new toxic waste is in. The consumer sentiment continues to get worse and worse as it becomes clearer and clearer that we are being intruded upon at will. It would be excellent to see some progress, in expanding & respecting our human rights to privacy.

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