US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

6/29/2026 at 5:51:11 PM

I always like to mention how Paula Broadwell was identified as David Petraeus' mistress as it's a good example of how even without a phone you can still be identified.

- FBI had three distinct IPs linked to emails

- They geolocated those back to 3 different hotels

- They pulled the guest list from each of the hotels

- Did a "join" on them and the only guest at all 3 was Broadwell

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Broadwell#Petraeus_affai...

by alexpotato

6/29/2026 at 6:33:16 PM

It's also a good demonstration how probable cause is supposed to work.

In this case, the subpoena probably looked something like "this email must have been sent by one of your guests, so give us the guest list and we'll cross check and find the guy".

Contrast with the geofence subpoena. "Hey maybe some small % of people carry a phone that might send its location to you, can we check if they did?" It's ludicrous.

by tantalor

6/29/2026 at 6:23:56 PM

This is also a great example of map resection.

by remarkEon

6/29/2026 at 4:57:00 PM

From https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/court-rules-that-law-enfo...

Additional details:

> The information that Google provided to law enforcement officials came in three tranches. First, Google gave law enforcement officials a list of the 19 accounts (but without the names attached to those accounts) linked to devices that were within 150 meters of the bank during the 30 minutes before and after the robbery. Second, based on that list of 19 accounts, the government asked for additional information about nine accounts that were in the area during a two-hour period. At the third step, a detective asked for, and received, the names and information associated with three accounts – one of which was Chatrie’s.

> Relying on the location data, law enforcement officials obtained a warrant to search two residences linked to Chatrie, where they found almost $100,000 of the stolen cash, a gun, and demand notes.

> Prosecutors charged Chatrie with bank robbery. He asked the trial judge to bar prosecutors from using the evidence obtained as a result of the geofence warrant at his trial, arguing that the warrant violated the Fourth Amendment.

> A federal district judge agreed that the warrant in Chatrie’s case did not have the kind of probable cause and specificity that the Fourth Amendment requires. However, she nonetheless allowed the prosecutors to use the evidence, reasoning that even if there had been a violation of the Fourth Amendment, law enforcement officials had acted in good faith.

Link to ruling:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-112_0am4.pdf

by js2

6/29/2026 at 5:17:29 PM

I guess don't bring your phone to a bank robbery.

I believe this is similar to how they nabbed the Washington State University murderer. The feds compelled Amazon to give them all the bluetooth MAC addresses that was seen by the Echo device in the home around the time of the murders and were able to correlate it to other devices their suspect's phone had been visible to.

by petcat

6/29/2026 at 5:31:34 PM

> I guess don't bring your phone to a bank robbery.

You should also make sure not to bring your phone to anywhere where a nearby crime is happening because that's all it takes to make you a suspect and force you spend a bunch of money defending yourself. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike...

Hopefully rulings like this make that scenario a little less likely to happen, but it doesn't stop it entirely, it just means that the police need to spend 15 minutes to get a rubber-stamped warrant before they turn everyone within a few miles of crime into a suspect.

by autoexec

6/29/2026 at 6:50:19 PM

There's no indication that this guy had to hire a lawyer or actually do anything. The same location data that put him near the scene/time of the crime would also absolve him. I guess it's sad that he felt the need to pay for a lawyer.

by IncreasePosts

6/29/2026 at 5:46:29 PM

>You should also make sure not to bring your phone to anywhere where a nearby crime is happening because that's all it takes to make you a suspect

Proximity to a crime makes you a suspect even without the phone, right?

by jotux

6/29/2026 at 6:01:05 PM

Only if it's known that you were ever there in the first place, and people that typically wouldn't ever be considered, like someone who is quietly visiting in the living room of someone who lives nearby, will fall under scrutiny when police are just getting the data of everyone in a certain radius.

by autoexec

6/29/2026 at 6:20:11 PM

one of the more fun things I learned during criminal court in Texas is that the absence of forensic evidence cannot exonerate an individual. The prosecutor and the judge covered that despite not having any forensic evidence, the jury would still be expected to be able to convict the defendant. If you weren't OK with that you weren't eligible to serve on a jury.

by sidewndr46

6/29/2026 at 6:30:07 PM

Was your prior assumption that forensic evidence must exist in every case—and that if it doesn’t, then there’s no way to convince a jury of someone’s guilt?

As in, as long as I clean up really well afterward, I can pretty much do what I want?

by alwa

6/29/2026 at 6:50:03 PM

I think you're missing the slippery slope that this goes down. The criminal charges were way too low, given the alleged actions. The state admitted it had absolutely no forensic evidence. The judge was perfectly fine with this and selecting a jury that was OK convicting in this circumstance. This pretty quickly pretty us down a path of "you're guilty of at least one crime since you've been indicted, maybe a more serious one if we have some evidence".

by sidewndr46

6/29/2026 at 5:39:13 PM

I mean in this case it would also have helped not to have $100k in cash from a bank robbery laying around.

by bombcar

6/29/2026 at 6:05:53 PM

Source for this? As I recall, his phone was off when he committed the murders. In fact, they used the evidence that it had been turned off just for the duration of the murders (with some padding) against him.

If you're going to commit a crime, don't suddenly turn off your phone if you don't have a history of doing so!

by BeetleB

6/29/2026 at 5:26:55 PM

Do you have a source for this? I find it hard to believe this data is persisted, unless they tore open the device to extract logs.

by xyzzy_plugh

6/29/2026 at 5:29:14 PM

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/amazon-releases-echo-dat...

by ceejayoz

6/29/2026 at 5:34:45 PM

This article is about audio recordings. There's no mention of Bluetooth nor any mention as to if there were any relevant recordings, which as I understand it are not stored on the device at all.

This smells like an urban myth.

by xyzzy_plugh

6/29/2026 at 5:39:15 PM

I don't think it's implausible that an Echo would have an internal list of trusted Bluetooth devices and their last date of connectivity.

by ceejayoz

6/29/2026 at 6:27:52 PM

The original claim is:

> all the bluetooth MAC addresses that was seen by the Echo device in the home around the time of the murders

which is just not how this stuff works. I'd believe it if, say, debug-level logs were being recorded locally. But that would be an incredibly stupid way to burn through your flash storage.

But that's besides the point. A record of the last date of connectivity for trusted devices is an entirely different thing.

I'm interested in evidence that this type of data extraction took place. I'm not interested in speculation.

by xyzzy_plugh

6/29/2026 at 6:49:24 PM

My car shows "last seen" on its Bluetooth connections. The murderer in this case was an invited friend; it's hardly implausible he's connected to Bluetooth there.

> I'm interested in evidence that this type of data extraction took place.

That they obtained access to the Echo's internals via Amazon is evidence. It sounds like you want proof of a very particular bit of data being in it, which I'd guess the FBI etc. aren't going to provide here.

by ceejayoz

6/29/2026 at 5:36:52 PM

It is a little confusing, they ruled that the search was not legitimate, but this didn’t end up helping the defendant? I’m definitely missing an important nuance here but I’m not sure what it is…

by bee_rider

6/29/2026 at 5:38:35 PM

> [E]ven if there had been a violation of the Fourth Amendment, law enforcement officials had acted in good faith.

How is this even remotely a possibility?

by plagiarist

6/29/2026 at 5:45:18 PM

It just means they were completely transparent with the court when getting the data, and believed themselves it was lawful.

What’s hard to believe about that? They clearly put some effort into minimising the collateral privacy intrusions.

by ChrisKnott

6/29/2026 at 6:50:28 PM

In retrospect, the part I quoted is very unclear for what I intended. I should have added more.

What's hard to believe is the data is apparently still allowed in the case. Like... how?

by plagiarist

6/29/2026 at 5:52:02 PM

Because there are way too many existing precedents where "acting in good faith" was sufficient to overcome the Fruit of the poison tree doctrine.

by Tangurena2

6/29/2026 at 6:19:28 PM

This court doesn’t care about precedent.

by adestefan

6/29/2026 at 6:29:59 PM

If it is reasonable to have your privacy in a public place, does this mean that products like Flock which indiscriminately violate your privacy would now require a warrant for law enforcement to access (currently they do not)?

by arlattimore

6/29/2026 at 6:38:40 PM

> If it is reasonable to have your privacy in a public place

I don't think it's reasonable to have privacy in a public place. All other arguments follow from there.

What do you think should be "private" when you step outside your home?

by petcat

6/29/2026 at 6:23:27 PM

> Chatrie had opted in to an optional Google “location history” feature that documented his location every few minutes.

Google removed this feature last year because they were tired of dealing with these warrants. Now your devices each store their own location history without centralisation.

by microgpt

6/29/2026 at 4:45:54 PM

Of course Alito and Thomas would have allowed the government unlimited power. I am bit surprised to see Barret in the minority of this one.

by Hnrobert42

6/29/2026 at 4:49:49 PM

She's not as big on some of the broader interpretations of the 4th amendment that more civil liberty minded justices would lend credence to.

by DetroitThrow

6/29/2026 at 5:07:07 PM

Particularly when it comes to tech, she usually goes along party lines but she's been surprisingly independent in other areas. When it comes to the 4th she does heavily prioritize the sanctity of the home and property rights.

by thewebguyd

6/29/2026 at 5:13:52 PM

I have a pet theory that it’s difficult for her to convince the far right wing of the court to let her write the majority opinion, and that’s part of what is fueling these uncharacteristic or “independent” moments.

by TimorousBestie

6/29/2026 at 5:26:01 PM

I am pretty sure the Chief Justice chooses who writes the opinion when he (or, one day, she) is in the majority, and if that's right, then Roberts is the only one she would have to convince

by newaccountman2

6/29/2026 at 5:17:46 PM

When the Court rules to the center, I think Roberts likes to take it himself or let a liberal Justice write it so it looks like the court is balanced and unified or something.

Roberts has lost control of his court and is desperately trying to make it appear legitimate.

by ocdtrekkie

6/29/2026 at 5:37:39 PM

Genuinely curious:

What does it mean for a Chief Justice to be in control of their court, and of course, for them to be out of control?

by wyldberry

6/29/2026 at 6:26:16 PM

The CJ decides who writes the opinion of the majority if in the majority, and the dissent if in the dissent. Its the job of the CJ to bring sides together in clear oppositions, and "horse trade" between bits and pieces of a decision so that its clear where a majority/minority lie.

The CJ's foremost political role is to ensure the judicial branch of government is seen as a politically legitimate institution which wields its power against the other branches in a constitutionally and poltiically legitimate way. If that slips, congress can start hiring/firing; and the executive, in the end, controls the guns -- they can be arrested.

To avoid being arrested or fired, the court has to keep all sides believing the rules they set are fair.

They have no power, in the end, but the power they are allowed to have. They govern by consent of the other branches, and that's trivial to take away

by mjburgess

6/29/2026 at 5:47:36 PM

So very specifically I've historically read Roberts as a fairly moderate jurist. He has a true romanticism about the neutrality of the court and that it shouldn't be a political body. (This is ridiculous, but anyways.) This has changed as the court has reached a 6/3 bias. When the court was a 5/4, Roberts could swing to the center and bring the majority position with him. But now the far right wing doesn't need his help: The conservative wing can do a 5/4 even with his dissent. So you see Roberts bucking the conservative trend much less, maybe not because he agrees with the court but knows he can't push the outcome to the center.

The other aspect I think in play here is that the current executive branch pretty much just ignores every court order it doesn't like, and the Court can't enforce any ruling it makes, because that's the executive branch's job. I think Roberts knows if the Court pulls against Trump very hard, it could lead to a showdown where Trump just... does what he wants anyways, which would destroy the perceived power of the Court. I think Roberts has tried to dodge a lot of law and a lot of rulings to avoid clear positions on the President which he would, in turn, ignore.

by ocdtrekkie

6/29/2026 at 5:16:06 PM

She doesn’t have to convince the “far right wing”. As long as CJ Roberts (not generally regarded as in any “wing”) is in the majority, he can assign the opinion to her.

by twoodfin

6/29/2026 at 5:20:10 PM

[flagged]

by TimorousBestie

6/29/2026 at 5:37:43 PM

[flagged]

by torstenvl

6/29/2026 at 6:02:29 PM

[flagged]

by b40d-48b2-979e

6/29/2026 at 5:16:03 PM

As per the current conservative trend of allowing authoritarianism through technicality, the majority of Alito's dissent is just that the Court shouldn't rule on this at all because it won't help the defendant's case much specifically.

by ocdtrekkie

6/29/2026 at 5:22:39 PM

With the exception of citizens vs united, I think most of the decisions of the "conservative" court have been along the lines that congress should do its job. I don't see how all this turns out well for normal people, but if it does, I think congress will have to be much stronger than it was within the federal government, and the federal government will have to be much weaker than it was. The structural problems are that the federal government doesn't want to be weaker, and congress people don't want to be stronger, because they have no term limits, so they don't want the power to rock the boat.

by galangalalgol

6/29/2026 at 5:24:25 PM

> I think most of the decisions of the "conservative" court have been along the lines that congress should do its job.

They have repeatedly reduced Congressional powers, including today, where they basically said Congress can't setup genuinely independent agencies (in Slaughter). Or when they kneecapped the VRA.

Some of them likely subscribe privately to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory.

by ceejayoz

6/29/2026 at 5:30:05 PM

Slaughter determined that agencies congress had ceded to the executive branch had control of the executive. It doesn't stop congress from directly exercising that power instead. It just says you can't play the fuck-fuck game where you pretend to create an agency in the executive branch but actually violate the constitution by trying to create a new branch.

by mothballed

6/29/2026 at 5:32:26 PM

> Slaughter determined that agencies congress had ceded to the executive branch had control of the executive.

The law Congress passed set rules requiring cause for a firing of an FTC commissioner.

It appears they now lack that power that they've had for almost a century.

Or Alito's new "history and tradition" test, invented out of whole cloth to take out abortion but now being applied to all sorts of things Congress does.

by ceejayoz

6/29/2026 at 5:37:28 PM

Statutes don't supersede the constitution and passing one doesn't create that power.

by mothballed

6/29/2026 at 5:40:11 PM

> Statutes don't supersede the constitution…

"We can make rules the President has to follow" does not supersede the Constitution.

by ceejayoz

6/29/2026 at 6:01:44 PM

It obviously depends on what rules they make. They can't make a rule creating a body of government employees that decide the substance of rules (not just implementation details), and then also has armed officers to enforce those rules, with its own judges to have hearings specific to those rules. Whether you heard ice or atf when you read that, they both fit. I like Gorsuch's opinion. He clearly calls out this danger of a half step of saying the president has complete control of the executive without also ruling the agencies themselves are unconstitutional. Realistically though instantly removing all those agencies would mean chaos. The court can't rule how to fix something, only that the rock brought before them is the wrong rock. The telling bit would be if someone then brings them a case where the removal of the ftc leadership has resulted in the agency not enforcing the laws as written. If they then side with the congress I would give them the benefit of my doubt. But I do also feel like their positions, while correct, are correct only out of the context of their environment.

by galangalalgol

6/29/2026 at 6:03:26 PM

> It obviously depends on what rules they make.

Today, the Court ruled that Congress can make the Federal Reserve an independent agency, but not the FTC. Same day, same justice!

What are the rules, exactly?

by ceejayoz

6/29/2026 at 6:15:36 PM

I see and acknowledge your point. But going back to

>Slaughter determined that agencies congress had ceded to the executive branch had control of the executive.

Congress ceded FTC to the executive branch. Congress put the Federal Reserve in some magical land, outside the executive branch, that doesn't even make sense.

My theory was that SCOTUS ruled the executive had this power over the agencies executive branch. Seems SCOTUS doesn't want to touch federal reserve question with a 10 foot pole. But going back to my original theory, it is a slightly different framing, since everyone involved freely agrees FTC is an executive agency while the federal reserve does not enjoy this agreement.

I do agree the federal reserve as independent makes no sense but I don't think it's the same question posed since you're not starting with the assumption the agency in question is an executive agency. SCOTUS seems to have ruled that an agency in the executive branch has executive control, while not going so far as to determine that the federal reserve is in the executive branch which is an entirely different question.

It's important to note SCOTUS is too chickenshit to rule on anything but in the most narrow way possible. If you ask them to rule on something with a prior established fact that it's in the executive branch you're likely going to get a very narrow ruling that doesn't try to create a unifying theory of everything.

by mothballed

6/29/2026 at 6:16:47 PM

> I do agree the federal reserve as independent makes no sense but I don't think it's the same question posed.

I think it's the core question; are there really rules at all?

The two rulings make that answer clear, I think.

Roberts in Cook says that firing was "out of step with the statute Congress enacted and our nation’s tradition of central banking protected from political interference". How is the FTC's setup in this regard not part of the same tradition? What part of the Constitution permits the Fed's existence outside of any of the branches? Why can Congress establish a central bank outside the Executive entirely, but not regulate the FTC?

by ceejayoz

6/29/2026 at 5:40:43 PM

In this case, it did, that's why SCOTUS ruled against it.

by mothballed

6/29/2026 at 5:42:24 PM

SCOTUS does not enjoy papal infallibility. They fuck up.

(Or act maliciously, as when Alito invented the new "history and tradition" test.)

by ceejayoz

6/29/2026 at 5:47:10 PM

Congress fucks up as well. There's as pretty strong argument that "independence" from the executive power vested in the POTUS and legislative branch puts that power in a place not authorized anywhere in the constitution, and for good reason, as the design of the constitution intends elected office to have direct control over powers of congress and the executive.

by mothballed

6/29/2026 at 5:55:04 PM

Yeah, that's why we have the veto power; as a check on their power.

SCOTUS has now given the executive retroactive uncheckable vetos. Yikes. "Those rules we agreed to, signed into law, and followed for the last 90 years? HAHA PSYCHE SUCKERS!"

Reminder: On the SAME DAY, the SAME JUSTICE issued an opinion that the President can't fire a Federal Reserve member, in Cook, saying it was "out of step with the statute Congress enacted and our nation’s tradition of central banking protected from political interference". You're asserting consistency that simply does not exist; the Court is starting with the desired ruling and working backwards from there.

by ceejayoz

6/29/2026 at 5:28:06 PM

I agree in general, but this is also why I say allowing authoritarianism through technicality. They know by punting to Congress, a body that is completely paralyzed, what the practical outcome of that ruling is.

by ocdtrekkie

6/29/2026 at 6:30:38 PM

I agree that motive is likely in at least one justice. But at the same time, if they really wanted to get back to original principles, they would have to take a wrecking ball to virtually every agency without being able to provide any substitute for the load bearing bits. I think these artificially narrow rulings are what some of the justices think is the middle ground to work in that direction without bringing the roof down. Thomas in particular has advocated for simply taking out the walls and trusting congress and the states will somehow fix everything and it isn't their problem. I think his opinions have occasionally been horribly flawed, but I see his vision and get what he is hoping for. I suspect something like that is the only way a representative democracy could recur in the US. Right now, states with strong geographic bents towards authoritarianism can use power of the federal executive to strengthen their position. If the federal executive had no agencies and was powerless the way Thomas suggests, those states wouldn't have much impact. But that entails acknowledging the entirety of the federal bureaucracy is unconstitutional and creating all sorts of power vacuums. Who knows how that would turn out? I increasingly think it couldn't be worse than the likely end state of a federal autocracy if we don't.

by galangalalgol

6/29/2026 at 4:54:59 PM

PDF of the full decision: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-112_0am4.pdf

by gausswho

6/29/2026 at 5:39:27 PM

IANAL, what are the practical implications of this? I assume the outcome is police would first need probable cause to suspect a specific person of a crime, and then get a warrant for that person's location. Am I wrong?

by ARandomerDude

6/29/2026 at 5:44:44 PM

It’s raising the bar for doing these searches. Essentially saying some government investigator can’t go “oh well if we had this data we might find something interesting, so let’s get the data.” The court here is saying these geofenced searches smell a lot like such a fishing expedition hoping to find something interesting.

Rather you should have evidence that a specific person did a specific thing and need to conduct a search to find additional evidence of said person doing said thing.

The 4th amendment protects US persons from the government just doing generalized searches in hopes that it will turn up useful info. You have a right to privacy from the government unless the government can clear a high bar showing probable cause that you’ve done something wrong.

by cmiles8

6/29/2026 at 4:33:17 PM

good. Of course the precise language of the ruling matters, but good.

by carterschonwald

6/29/2026 at 4:37:14 PM

Excellent, I wonder how this might impact things like this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48467712

by puppycodes

6/29/2026 at 5:26:47 PM

It will offer this company and those similar to it the ability to increase shareholder value by selling amalgamated information to law enforcement.

by atroon

6/29/2026 at 5:44:50 PM

Google, the company in the case in question, doesn't sell your data. That would be a big change for them to start, they like to keep it for themselves.

by Cider9986

6/29/2026 at 4:50:25 PM

What if they purchase the information from a company peddling it rather than compelling cell phone companies to hand it over?

by jimbob45

6/29/2026 at 5:21:13 PM

This data was being “compelled” from Google. If Google had told its users that their data might be sold, had sold it, and the government had acquired it that way, this case comes out differently.

In reality, Google simply stopped collecting this data in their cloud, leaving it only on the phone.

Highly recommend (as always) listening to the oral arguments in your favorite podcast player. The specific question of how Google’s T&C’s mattered here came up more than once.

by twoodfin

6/29/2026 at 5:23:04 PM

For an example of what can be done with such purchased data, one project at a previous employer was:

- identifying all cell phone #s which would regularly appear w/in a certain radius of any State Police Barracks

- disambiguating that from people who lived/worked nearby and/or who met certain criteria

- determining the income and certain other criteria of the remaining numbers

- identifying the home address of the remaining cell #s which met the final criteria and mailing a franchise offer to those cell #s with the assumption that it would be targeting State Police Troopers

by WillAdams

6/29/2026 at 5:50:13 PM

In fairness, I mean, if the people collecting the data sell it on the open market, then you can't realistically expect it to be private.

The only solution in that case is to make it illegal to sell the data. And that's never gonna happen in the US.

by bilbo0s

6/29/2026 at 4:55:20 PM

That is the loop hole IMO and that's how they will get around it.

by Molitor5901

6/29/2026 at 5:04:07 PM

Birthright citizenship decision coming tomorrow.

by 2OEH8eoCRo0

6/29/2026 at 5:19:16 PM

Yep. And this hypocritical bench has had a pattern of ruling sensibly on minor issues like this just before ruling with torturous rationalizations to strip rights from people on larger issues. Feels like there's about to be some pure bullshit spewing from the right flank of this illegitimate court. I'd dearly love to be wrong about this, but I'm not holding out hope. Until alito and thomas are impeached for unconstitutional rulings and bribery, there's nothing worth hoping for.

by catapart

6/29/2026 at 5:49:03 PM

There's a 94% chance the EO is struck down on polymarket.

by Cider9986

6/29/2026 at 6:51:21 PM

It's disturbing that the statistic you cite does give me hope (if true). But if I had an account, I'd still put $50 against it. I'm cynical enough to at least entertain the possibility that these corrupt dickheads have let the market get that lopsided as a way to cash in on top of their odious ruling (by way of bribes after they make other people richer).

by catapart

6/29/2026 at 5:58:29 PM

And what are the odds in Vegas? How is the opinion of a bunch of gamblers on polymarket relevant?

by awkwardpotato

6/29/2026 at 6:38:59 PM

Presumably the justices (or their clerks) have told their friends how they're going to rule, and their friends have told their friends, and that's made the market. Or that's supposed to be the value prop of Polymarket.

There's precedent. Roberts was so angry that someone leaked the Dobbs decision that he spearheaded the investigation that found that nobody would admit to leaking and there's nothing they can do.

by projektfu

6/29/2026 at 6:13:00 PM

Because Polymarket is full of corrupt folks with insider information. Trump Jr. Is a senior advisor to Polymarket. Iran admitted they would observe Polymarket bets during the height of the war to see when they were next likely to get bombed.

by jbird99

6/29/2026 at 4:51:36 PM

rare scotus W, but i strongly suspect that because this data is "owned" by someone other than the people that generated it that said owners will simply choose to voluntarily cooperate with government inquiries 100% of the time. You can suppress information if the government unconstitutionally compels google to turn it over, but I don't believe that you as a defendant could push to exclude evidence if it was willingly turned over by a third party that had the right to have it.

by ratelimitsteve