Supreme Court to take up cellphone location tracking warrants
AP News • • nation
Key Points:
- The Supreme Court has agreed to review the constitutionality of "geofence warrants," which collect location data from all cellphone users in a specific area to identify individuals near crime scenes.
- The case centers on a 2019 bank robbery in suburban Richmond, Virginia, where police used a geofence warrant served on Google to arrest Okello Chatrie, who later pleaded guilty and received a nearly 12-year sentence.
- Chatrie's lawyers argue the warrant violated privacy rights by gathering location data from innocent people without evidence linking them to the crime, while prosecutors contend there was no privacy expectation since Chatrie had enabled Google's Location History.
- A federal judge ruled the search violated Chatrie's rights but allowed the evidence due to the
