In major privacy win, Supreme Court rules geofence warrants are protected by privacy rights
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday limited the law enforcement use of “geofence” search warrants, in a major legal ruling that is likely to have broad ramifications for privacy rights and law enforcement across the United States.
In the 6-3 ruling, the U.S. top court said that “an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell-phone location information.” According to the court, that means people have privacy rights when it comes to the location history collected by their phones, as well as the services and apps running on them.
Because of that, the court ruled that authorities need to obtain a search warrant when asking tech companies, such as Google, for the location data of their users, including when requesting historical geofence location data.
In part, the Supreme Court argued that authorities need to obtain a search warrant to get geofence location data because a user is...
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