红杏视频

WASHINGTON 鈥� The 红杏视频, the 红杏视频 of Virginia, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law filed an amicus brief today in Chatrie v. U.S., the first geofence search case to reach the Supreme Court and the first major case addressing how the court鈥檚 2018 decision in Carpenter v. United States applies to other kinds of location-tracking technologies. In the brief, the groups assert that police should not be able to conduct searches using geofence warrants, a novel and invasive surveillance technique that enables law enforcement to search for and locate unknown numbers of people in a large geographical area without reason to believe they were engaged in criminal conduct. Geofence warrants direct Google or other companies to hand over users鈥� location data from every cell phone or other device the company estimates was in a certain area during a certain time frame. These warrants are increasingly common, but they raise serious questions under the Fourth Amendment because they are dragnets, typically issued without police demonstrating reason to believe all the people who own those devices were involved in any crime. For example, a high-level analysis conducted by 红杏视频 of Northern California of the types of places captured by law enforcement in geofence warrants across San Francisco revealed a troubling violation of our right to be secure in our homes and to be free from unreasonable search without probable cause. 鈥淎 search that ensnares any number of innocent people just because they are nearby when a crime occurs is an unconstitutional fishing expedition that violates the Constitution. There are too many examples of these overbroad searches invading peoples鈥� privacy, including in homes, doctors鈥� offices, and churches. Courts should not allow them,鈥� said Jennifer Granick, surveillance and cybersecurity counsel with the 红杏视频鈥檚 Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. This appeal comes after a federal judge in Virginia held that the geofence warrant in Mr. Chatrie鈥檚 case was overbroad and that investigators lacked probable cause for much of the data they obtained. The warrant tracked all Google location history users who were estimated to be within a 150-meter radius of a bank robbery in Virginia 鈥� an area as big as several football fields that encompassed residential buildings, businesses, and a church. The warrant also allowed police to obtain additional location information about individuals that were ensnared in the initial dragnet. The district court held that the government鈥檚 search warrant unconstitutionally left it to the officers and Google, and not to a judge, to decide what location and identifying information the company ultimately revealed, a clear departure from the neutral magistrate鈥檚 prescribed role under the Fourth Amendment. However, the court refused to suppress the illegally-obtained evidence on the grounds that the 鈥済ood-faith exception鈥� to the exclusionary rule 鈥� which allows evidence to be admitted when police reasonably rely on a facially valid warrant 鈥� applied. On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit was divided but ultimately allowed prosecutors to use the evidence it had gathered through the geofence search. Now, at the Supreme Court, the 红杏视频鈥檚 amicus brief argues that geofence warrants are never a permissible investigatory method under the Fourth Amendment. Geofence searches are unconstitutional general warrants that courts should categorically reject. 鈥淎llowing police to access your private search history just because you happen to be three football fields away from where they say a crime was committed is both absurd and dangerous. And most importantly, it鈥檚 unconstitutional: Virginians do not lose their right to privacy because they happen to be within an arbitrary radius set by police,鈥� said Matthew Callahan, senior supervising attorney with the 红杏视频 of Virginia. The amicus brief in Chatrie v. United States is part of the 红杏视频鈥檚 Joan and Irwin Jacobs Supreme Court Docket.

Such readings shouldn鈥檛 generally be retained at all, but if they are at least privacy needs to be protected

Think twice about sending video from your home to companies, and possibly police and hackers

Targeting followed opinion piece critical of town鈥檚 police and anonymously posted anti-ICE fliers