Supreme Court Appears Ready to Allow Police to Track Your Phone Location Near Crime Scenes

The Supreme Court heard arguments today in a case that will decide whether police can use a new surveillance technique to identify suspects. The technique, called a geofence warrant, lets law enforcement pull location data from all cellphones in a specific area during a specific time—say, a small neighborhood during a bank robbery. Based on the justices' questions, they seem prepared to allow the practice.

What Happened in This Case

A man named Okello Chatrie was convicted of robbing a credit union in Virginia in 2019. Police used a geofence warrant to find out which cellphones were near the robbery location at the time. His phone was one of only a handful in that area. This location data became the starting point for investigators to get a traditional search warrant for his home, where they found evidence that led to his conviction.

Chatrie's lawyers argued that this method violates the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable searches. But the court hearing suggested the Supreme Court justices are not convinced by that argument.

How Geofence Warrants Work

Think of a geofence warrant like this: instead of police asking Google "where is John Smith's phone right now," they ask Google "what phones were in this five-block radius between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m." Then, from that list of phones, they can ask for the names of the people who own them.

Police typically use the technique in three steps. First, they get anonymized data—just numbers, no names—showing which phones were in the area. Then they narrow down to phones they find interesting. Finally, they ask for the subscriber information so they can identify who owns those phones.

This is very different from older police methods. Traditionally, if police wanted cellphone data, they already had a specific suspect in mind. A geofence warrant casts a wide net and looks at everyone, then narrows down from there.

The practice is newer. Police started using geofence warrants around 2016. Court records show Google received over 11,000 geofence requests from U.S. law enforcement in just the first half of 2020 alone—the technique has grown very quickly.

Who Is On Which Side

Privacy advocates lined up against the practice. The ACLU, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and other civil liberties groups filed legal documents supporting Chatrie, arguing the warrants go too far.

On the other side, local government and police organizations filed documents supporting the practice, saying it is an important tool for solving crimes.

What This Connects To: A Recent Supreme Court Privacy Case

The Court has dealt with digital location tracking before. In 2018, the Supreme Court decided a case called Carpenter v. United States, which involved police tracking a man's movements through cellphone tower signals for nearly four months without a warrant. That Court said such long-term tracking is a search under the Fourth Amendment and requires a warrant.

But the Carpenter case left some questions open. Geofence warrants are different in a key way: they usually track a lot of people for a very short time around one specific event, rather than following one person for months. That difference may matter to how the Court sees this new case.

What Could Happen Next

If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the police, it will be a signal that geofence warrants are constitutional. That could clear the way for police to use similar techniques more widely. It might also affect what the courts think about other new surveillance tools, like facial recognition cameras or automatic license plate readers.

The practical impact is worth considering. Most people who enable location tracking on their phones do not realize that this data can be turned over to police through a warrant. A Supreme Court decision upholding geofence warrants would mean your phone location could put you on a police radar just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time—even if you had nothing to do with any crime.

The Court is expected to announce its decision by the end of June.