Supreme Court Rules Police Need Warrant for Phone Location Data
5 verified3 unconfirmed
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that law enforcement must obtain a warrant based on probable cause before acquiring a person’s cellphone location history from third-party companies like Google. The 6-3 decision in Chatrie v. United States found that individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their mobile device’s geolocation data, extending Fourth Amendment protections previously applied to cell-site location information in the 2018 Carpenter ruling. The case stemmed from a bank robbery investigation in which police used a geofence warrant to obtain location data from Google, leading to the arrest of Okello Chatrie. The government argued that no search occurred because Chatrie had voluntarily opted into Google’s Location History service, but the Court majority rejected that reasoning, stating that Google’s prompts do not adequately inform users how frequently their location is recorded, how precise it is, or how it might be shared with authorities. Privacy advocates praised the decision as a major victory, though the ruling does not fully resolve Chatrie’s case and leaves room for lower courts to examine the specific warrant’s validity. The Court’s opinion reaffirms that even short-term location tracking constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment.
What’s verified
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that police need a warrant based on probable cause to obtain cellphone location history data from third parties like Google.
The decision came in the case of Chatrie v. United States, involving a bank robbery investigation where a geofence warrant was used to get Google’s Location History data.
The Court rejected the government’s argument that no Fourth Amendment search occurred because the user voluntarily opted into Google’s Location History service.
The majority opinion stated that Google repeatedly prompts users to enable location services, often warning devices will not work correctly, while not disclosing how frequently data is recorded, its precision, or how it could be given to the government.
The ruling extends the protections established in the 2018 Supreme Court case Carpenter v. United States, which limited warrantless searches of cell-site location information.
Not yet confirmed
One source reported that Okello Chatrie was sentenced to 12 years in prison and challenged the geofence warrant; the other source stated that the case has been remanded to a lower appeals court to assess the warrant’s validity.
One source noted that Justice Elena Kagan wrote the majority opinion, and another source identified Justice Kavanaugh as one of the six justices in the majority.
Additional details from a single source include: Google reported in 2021 that geofence warrants represented about 25 percent of all U.S. warrants it received by 2020; Google later announced changes to store location history data on-device; a bipartisan bill called the Government Surveillance Reform Act was introduced in March to block the government from buying private data from data brokers; Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act expired in June; and California will require data brokers to process opt-out requests via a state platform in August.
Key figures
Okello Chatrie: defendant whose case led to the Supreme Court ruling; convicted in the bank robbery case.
Justice Elena Kagan: author of the majority opinion (per one source).
Justice Brett Kavanaugh: member of the 6-3 majority (per one source).
Orin Kerr: Stanford Law School professor who commented on the decision.
Andrew Crocker: Surveillance Litigation Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
Eden Heilman: Legal Director of the ACLU of Virginia.
Sources: Ars Technica, theregister.com
