🚨 BIG WIN FOR DIGITAL PRIVACY: Supreme Court Rules 6-3 in Chatrie v. United States That Geofence Digital Dragnets Require A Warrant For Search And Seizure Under The Fourth Amendment As A Physical Search Into Private Affairs.

The Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision today ruled that the government requires a warrant to search for information on someone’s smartphone.

The case, Chatrie v. United States, involved the government’s use of a “geofence” search, where the government provided Google with a list of hundreds of GPS coordinates corresponding to locations where surveillance had detected a black van similar to the one used by the defendant in a robbery.

The government argued that by carrying a smartphone around, Chatrie had “voluntarily exposed” himself to Google’s servers and thus had “assented” to the search. Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the majority that the Fourth Amendment protects the information on our smartphones, and that carrying a phone around in today’s world is a necessity of modern life, not a voluntary exposure of one’s private information to the police.

⚠️ Why this hits home: FLOCK Cameras ⚠️

The news of FLOCK safety cameras, or automated license plate readers (ALPRs), sprouting up all over local neighborhoods. Agencies are utilizing these camera’s to create a digital dragnet, taking pictures of every license plate number that goes through an intersection, and then reverse engineering a suspect list from the plethora of data retrieved from the safety cameras.

Following the Chatrie ruling, this practice by safety cameras is now constitutionally suspect.

No More Bulk Dumps: Big win for digital privacy, now local law enforcement can’t pull a Flock dump of every law abiding drivers’ license plate numbers in a given digital boundary.

The “public road” loophole that may or may not exist in the law is rapidly shrinking. And it is becoming increasingly clear that an automated, or even better, continuous, tracking of a person – whether by vehicle or on foot – to create a timeline of their daily activities (e.g. work, sleep, worship) is in violation of the most basic of our Fourth Amendment rights.

Corporate Data is Protected: The court ruled that information held by private corporations such as Flock safety cameras will be protected from search by state and local law enforcement just as any other data protected by the Fourth Amendment.

Technology is good but it can be a very bad tool when used to cast a net over hundreds of individuals to gather information on one.

So, the question is: are Flock safety cameras an essential tool for police to detect crime, or are they a modern general warrant that should be prohibited?

#DigitalPrivacy #FourthAmendment #FlockSafety #TheGeorgiaIndependent #ConstitutionalRights