Supreme Court punts geofence case

Supreme Court sends back geofence warrant

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy when it comes to their cellphone location data, tossing out a ruling against a man convicted in a Virginia bank robbery case.

The justices held 6-3 that law enforcement’s use of a geofence warrant to identify Okello Chatrie was a search under the Fourth Amendment and sent the case back to a lower court for review.

“Because this is a ‘court of review, not a first view,’ the Court leaves it up to the Court of Appeals to decide whether, at each step of the search process, the warrant satisfied the Fourth Amendment’s requirements of particularity and probable cause,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the majority.

Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett dissented. 

Chatrie is serving nearly 12 years in prison after pleading guilty to robbing a credit union in the Richmond, Va., suburbs in 2019. 

He was identified through the use of a geofence warrant, a type of “reverse warrant” that compels technology companies to provide data from all devices at a specific place and time.

The tool is typically employed by investigators when they know specific details of a crime but don’t yet have a suspect.   

Law enforcement sought that data after seeing security camera footage of the unknown robbery suspect using a cellphone.

Investigators pinpointed Chatrie’s identity after narrowing their lists of potential suspects using anonymized data from all devices in a 17.5-acre radius around the bank.  

Chatrie moved to suppress the location data in court on the........

© The Hill