Court Decision: Geofence Warrants Are Unconstitutional, Says US Appeals Court

A federal appeals court has recently ruled that geofence warrants are unconstitutional, a significant decision that will limit the controversial use of these search warrants across several U.S. states. The ruling, issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which encompasses Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, determined that geofence warrants are “categorically prohibited by the Fourth Amendment,” which safeguards against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Civil liberties and privacy advocates have lauded this ruling, as it effectively renders the use of geofence warrants unlawful in these three states for the time being. Geofence warrants, sometimes referred to as “reverse” search warrants, empower law enforcement to delineate a specific area on a map, such as a crime scene, and compel companies like Google, which gather user location data, to search their extensive databases for any devices that were present in that area at a designated time.

Critics have consistently argued that geofence warrants infringe upon constitutional rights, as they can be excessively broad and potentially encompass data on innocent individuals who were merely passing through the area of interest. The legal case at the center of this ruling involved an armed robbery of a U.S. Postal Service worker in Mississippi in February 2018, where police utilized a geofence warrant to identify suspects associated with the crime.

The Fifth Circuit's decision diverges from a recent ruling by the Fourth Circuit, which oversees North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia. That earlier ruling determined that accessing Google’s repository of location data did not constitute a search, thereby upholding the legality of geofence warrants in those states.

In contrast, the Fifth Circuit asserted that when police seek data from Google’s extensive location databases in pursuit of a criminal suspect, it constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment. The court underscored that the sheer volume of data necessitated scanning the entire database, leading to the conclusion that no legal authority exists to authorize such a search. Law professor Orin Kerr analyzed the ruling, noting the court's emphasis on the problematic nature of these warrants, which often lack a specific user to be identified and instead focus solely on a temporal and geographic area. The court deemed this approach constitutionally inadequate.

Although the Fifth Circuit ruled geofence warrants unconstitutional, it acknowledged that the police acted in good faith when applying for the warrant in this particular case. The court upheld the defendant’s conviction, reasoning that the use of geofence warrants was relatively novel at the time, and the police department had sought legal guidance from other agencies before submitting the warrant. Consequently, the evidence collected in this instance was not suppressed.

Kerr pointed out that the ruling raises broader questions about the constitutionality of any digital warrants aimed at accessing online content. With tech companies like Google, Uber, and Snap amassing vast quantities of user location data on their servers, law enforcement can potentially access this information. The growing prevalence of geofence warrants has raised concerns, as they once accounted for approximately one-quarter of all legal requests received by Google.

As legal interpretations regarding geofence warrants continue to evolve, this ruling may set a precedent for how similar digital search requests are handled in the future, potentially reshaping the landscape of digital privacy and law enforcement access to user data.