. After pressure from activists, Google revealed in a press release last week that it had granted geofence warrants to U.S. police over 20,000 times in the past three years. at 498. A warrant that used Google location history to find people near the scene of a 2019 bank robbery violated their constitutional protection against unreasonable searches, a federal judge has ruled. Other tech companies, such as Uber, Lyft, Snapchat, and Apple have previously been approached for location data requests but they were unsuccessful. Geofence and reverse keyword warrants completely circumvent the limits set by the Fourth Amendment. and Apple said . ; see, e.g., Search Warrant, supra note 5. Men imprisoned for murder say police illegally used Google to find The geofence warrants served on Google shortly after the riot remained sealed. Time and place restrictions are thus crucial to the particularity analysis because they narrow the list of names that companies provide law enforcement initially, thereby limiting the number of individuals whose data law enforcement can sift through, analyze, and ultimately deanonymize.166166. Steagald v. United States, 451 U.S. 204, 220 (1981). Another covered solely a small L-shaped roadway,168168. does anyone know what happend to this or how i could do it? To leave probable cause determinations to officers would reduce the [Fourth] Amendment to a nullity and leave the peoples homes secure only in the discretion of police officers.5454. They sometimes approve warrants in a few minutes5555. Google Bankrupting Apple Privacy Promises by Handing Data to Police See, e.g., Search Warrant, supra note 5. In Ohio, requests rose from seven to 400 in that same time. applies to these warrants. 2015); Eunjoo Seo v. State, 148 N.E.3d 952, 959 (Ind. Id. Id. Geofence Warrants: The Last Piece of the Location Privacy Puzzle Which UI design tool should I use in 2020? at 117. For an overview of deference to police knowledge, see generally Anna Lvovsky, The Judicial Presumption of Police Expertise, 130 Harv. Schuppe, supra note 1. But a warrant does not need to describe the exact item being seized,160160. Id. In re Leopold to Unseal Certain Elec. Geofence warrants have become increasingly common over the past decade. See Rachel Levinson-Waldman, Hiding in Plain Sight: A Fourth Amendment Framework for Analyzing Government Surveillance in Public, 66 Emory L.J. Id. How not to get caught in law-enforcement geofence requests In practice, inquiry into probable cause for time will likely overlap with the preliminary question of whether geofence warrants are searches. Googles (or any other private companys) internal methods for processing geofence warrants, no matter how stringent, cannot make an otherwise unconstitutional warrant sufficiently particular. The back-and-forth that law enforcement and private companies often engage in, whereby officials ask companies for additional location information beyond the scope of the approved warrant, raises distinct concerns. Google Amicus Brief, supra note 11, at 3. Their increasingly common use means that anyone whose commute takes them goes by the scene of a crime might suddenly become vulnerable to suspicion, surveillance, and harassment by police. 2015) (emphasizing, albeit in a different context, that society often refuses to change and even perpetuates inherently unbalanced social structures and yet blames those disadvantaged for not being able to keep up). The location data typically comes from Google, who collects data from their Android phone . Across all 50 states, geofence requests to Google increased from 941 in 2018 to 11,033 in 2020 and now make up more than 25 percent of all data requests the company receives from law enforcement. Law Prof Suggests Geofence Warrants Are A Net Gain For The Public, Even There is, additionally, the age-old critique that judges do not understand the technologies they confront. When a geofence warrant is executed, courts should recognize that the search consists of two components: a search through (1) a private companys database for (2) data associated with a particular time and place. Thus, the conclusion that a geofence warrant involves a search of location data within certain geographic and temporal parameters, rather than a general search through a companys database, should be the beginning, not the end, of the analysis.129129. Otherwise, privacy protections would be left largely to the discretion of law enforcement rather than the judiciary or legislature.8989. . and reviled tools in law enforcement agencies digital toolbox. Minnesota law enforcement has already turned to geofence warrants to identify protesters,109109. at *1. Geo-fence warrant - Wikipedia In fact, it is more precise than either CSLI or GPS.3434. When probable cause to search a garage does not even extend to a bedroom in the same house,147147. Pharma II, 2020 WL 4931052, at *16; see also Groh, 540 U.S. at 557. For months, Zachary McCoy tracked the distance of his bike rides around his neighborhood in Gainesville, Florida, using his RunKeeper app.11. In the statement released by the companies, they write that, This bill, if passed into law, would be the first of its kind to address the increasing use of law enforcement requests that, instead of relying on individual suspicion, request data pertaining to individuals who may have been in a specific vicinity or used a certain search term. This is an undoubtedly positive step for companies that have a checkered history of being cavalier with users' data and enabling large-scale government surveillance. See, e.g., Stephen Silver, Police Are Casting a Wide Net into the Deep Pool of Google User Location Data to Solve Crimes, AppleInsider (Mar. In 2018, the Associated Press revealed that Google continues to collect location data even when location history tracking is disabled. [T]he liberty of every [person] would be placed in the hands of every petty officer.9090. See Products, Google, https://about.google/products [https://perma.cc/ZVM7-G9BX]. 636(a)(1); Fed. Application for Search Warrant, supra note 174. 25102522, which would require law enforcement to establish necessity. 27012712; Elm, supra note 27, at 9. its text merely requires a warrant issued using the procedures described in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. See Gates, 462 U.S. at 238. But in a dense city, even a relatively narrow geofence warrant would inevitably capture innocent citizens visiting not only busy public streets and commercial establishments, but also gyms, medical offices, and religious sites, revealing, by easy inference, political and religious associations, sexual orientation, and more.123123. 2010); United States v. Reed, 195 F. Appx 815, 822 (10th Cir. New Times (Jan. 16, 2020, 9:11 AM), https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/google-geofence-location-data-avondale-wrongful-arrest-molina-gaeta-11426374 [https://perma.cc/6RQD-JWYW]. A search for location history spanning several blocks, for example, may cabin officer discretion if only one or two people will be found, establishing particularity, but could still fail if there is no probable cause to search one of the several blocks, buildings, or units encompassed. Perhaps the best that can be said generally about the required knowledge component of probable cause for a law enforcement officers evidence search is that it raise a fair probabilityor a substantial chance of discovering evidence of criminal activity.139139. The private search doctrine does not apply because the doctrine requires a private entity independently to invade an individuals reasonable expectation of privacy before law enforcement does the same. In Ohio, requests rose from seven to 400 in that same time. Without additional warrants, officials are given leeway to expand searches beyond the time and geographic scope of the original request8383. In the past, the greatest protections of privacy were neither constitutional nor statutory, but practical.176176. Around 5 p.m. on May 20, 2019, a man with a gun robbed a bank near Richmond, Virginia, escaping with $195,000. 2018); United States v. Saemisch, 371 F. Supp. It means that an idle Google search for an address that corresponds to the scene of a robbery could make you a suspect. Execs. Assn, 489 U.S. 602, 614 (1989). 2017). Id. While Apple, Facebook and other tech companies have geofencing capabilities, Google is often used for . See id. Surveillance footage showed that the perpetrator held a cell phone to his ear before he entered the bank. Check your Apple warranty status. With permission from a judge, they allow law enforcement to obtain anonymized data from Google from almost any device that was in a certain geographic . Law enforcement simply specifies a location and period of time, and, after judicial approval, companies conduct sweeping searches of their location databases and provide a list of cell phones and affiliated users found at or near a specific area during a given timeframe, both defined by law enforcement.1111. Probable cause for a van does not extend to a suitcase located within it,119119. Relevant evidence could include the probability of finding location data of coconspirators or potential witnesses. This type of devastating scheme ensnares victims and takes them for all theyre worthand the threat is only growing. (1763) 98 Eng. Because the search area was broad and thus vague, a warrant would merely invite[] the officers to roam the length of [the street]117117. Ninety-six percent of Americans own cell phones. Laperruque proposes, at minimum, that law enforcement should be pushed to minimize search areas, delete any data they access as soon as possible, and provide much more robust justifications for their use of the technique, similar to the requirements for when police request use of a wiretap. Geofence and reverse keyword warrants are some of the most dangerous, civil-liberties-infringing and reviled tools in law enforcement agencies digital toolbox. See Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551, 560 (2004); see also Orin S. Kerr, Ex Ante Regulation of Computer Search and Seizure, 96 Va. L. Rev. PDF Legal Process Guidelines - Apple Inc. Oops something is broken right now, please try again later. The . Similarly, geofence warrants in Florida leaped from 81 requests in 2018 to more than 800 last year. Dozens of civil liberties groups and privacy advocates have called for banning the technique, arguing it violates Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches, particularly for protesters. Even more strikingly, this level of intrusion is often conducted with little to no public safety upside. 2012); Susan W. Brenner & Leo L. Clarke, Fourth Amendment Protection for Shared Privacy Rights in Stored Transactional Data, 14 J.L. 99, 12124 (1999). When law enforcement wants information associated with a particular location, rather than a particular user, it can request tower dumps download[s] of information on all the devices that connected to a particular cell site during a particular interval. Carpenter, 138 S. Ct. at 2220; see also United States v. Adkinson, 916 F.3d 605, 608 (7th Cir. In response to two FBI requests, for example, Google produced 1,494 accounts at step two.172172. . Much has been said about how courts will extend Carpenter if at all.3939. If a geofence warrant constitutes a search, two places are searched: (1) the companys location history records and (2) the geographic area and temporal scope delineated by the warrant. Geofence warrants: How police can use protesters' phones against them. See Google Amicus Brief, supra note 11, at 10; see also Carpenter, 138 S. Ct. at 2218 (recognizing that high technological precision increases the likelihood that a search exists); United States v. Beverly, 943 F.3d 225, 230 n.2 (5th Cir. Sess. The difference between a tower dump and step one of Googles framework is obvious: the tower dump involves only data tied to the cell towers location, while Google searches all of its location data even though none of it may be within the parameters of a geofence warrant. The size of the area may vary. Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373, 385 (2014). Washington, D.C.,2020. See Jon Schuppe, Google Tracked His Bike Ride Past a Burglarized Home. Affidavit at 1, In re Search of Info. If as is common practice, see, e.g., Affidavit for Search Warrant, supra note 65, at 23 officials had requested additional location data as part of step two for these 1,494 devices thirty minutes before and after the initial search, this subsequent search would be broader than many geofence warrants judges have struck down as too probing, see, e.g., Pharma II, No. 3d 648, 653 (N.D. Ill. 2019). In the probable cause context, time should be treated as just another axis like latitude and longitude along which the scope of a warrant can be adjusted. But geofence warrants do exactly that authorizing broad searches of entire location history databases, simply on the off chance that somebody connected with a crime might be found. Rather than issuing a warrant for data on a specific individual, these warrants seek information on all of the devices in a given area at a given time. Geofence warrants are amongst the many new ways policing has . In fact, it is this very pervasiveness that has led the Court to hold that searching a cell phone and obtaining CSLI are searches.145145. Emily Glazer & Patience Haggin, Political Groups Track Protesters Cellphone Data, Wall St. J. and should, by default, be available to ensure the transparency of the courts decisionmaking process.6363. While some explain this practice by pointing to the Stored Communications Act,5959. Although these warrants have been used since 2016 26 26. In other words, the characterization of a geofence warrant as a search in the first place likely relies in part on the prevalence of cell phones. 2013), vacated, 800 F.3d 559 (D.C. Cir. Google is the most common recipient and the only one known to respond.4747. 2016). This Note begins to fill the gap, focusing specifically on the Fourth Amendments warrant requirements: probable cause and particularity. Zack Whittaker, Minneapolis Police Tapped Google to Identify George Floyd Protesters, TechCrunch (Feb. 6, 2021, 11:00 AM), https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/06/minneapolis-protests-geofence-warrant [https://perma.cc/9ACT-G98Q]. Safford Unified Sch. and raise interesting and novel Fourth Amendment questions, they have rarely been studied.2727.