The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments over a law enforcement technique called geofencing, which lets police ask major tech companies to search their location databases to identify devices that were near a crime scene. At issue is whether geofence warrants are a legitimate investigative tool, an unconstitutional dragnet, or some combination, and whether they violate the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Geofencing allows investigators to draw a virtual perimeter around a location and seek a warrant compelling a company to search its records for devices that were within that perimeter at a specified time. In the case before the Court, prosecutors relied on data from Google’s “location history,” a service that combined multiple signals to record users’ whereabouts when enabled. When a phone was on and the setting active, Google could often identify where that device had been at particular moments.
When the investigation began in 2019, about one-third of Google users—roughly 500 million people—had enabled location history and the data was kept on Google’s servers and accessible under the company’s policies at that time. Stanford law professor Orin Kerr described geofencing as “a little bit of an investigative lottery ticket” when other leads are lacking.
The underlying criminal case involves a bank robbery in Midlothian, Virginia. After a gunman fled with $195,000 and leads stalled, police sought a geofence warrant obliging Google to produce location records for devices within roughly a three–football-field area around the bank during about an hour encompassing the robbery. A state magistrate found probable cause and issued the warrant.
Google initially identified 19 devices that matched the geofence criteria but resisted handing over broad identifying information. Through negotiations the list was reduced to nine, then three, and Google disclosed identifying details for those three devices. One individual identified, Okello Chatrie, was arrested; the other two appear to have been innocent bystanders. Critics emphasize that geofence warrants can sweep up many law-abiding people—worshippers, patients, political participants—raising alarms about surveillance of lawful activities. Supporters counter that the technique has helped solve crimes and, in some instances, distinguish violent actors from peaceful participants in mass events.
The government’s position, advanced in filings from the prior administration, is that users who enabled Google’s location history voluntarily surrendered any reasonable expectation of privacy in that information, making it obtainable with a warrant directed to the company. The government also says the search was properly targeted to Google’s servers where the records were stored.
The defense argues the warrant was effectively a modern-day general warrant, authorizing a search of “every single person’s account” to find evidence, requiring a company to sift through millions of accounts without individualized suspicion. At the Founding, general warrants that permitted broad, untargeted searches of private homes provoked outrage and helped inspire the Fourth Amendment’s requirement that warrants be supported by probable cause and particularized to the place and items searched.
Michael Dreeben, an experienced Justice Department advocate, framed the dispute to the Court as two core questions: first, whether geofence searches fall within the scope of the Fourth Amendment at all, and second, whether people who opted into cloud-based location services effectively surrendered any privacy interest in those records. He acknowledged that a travel log maintained for an individual’s benefit—whether kept on paper or stored in the cloud—should not be subject to arbitrary government intrusion.
How widespread geofence warrants are is imprecise. A Hofstra Law Review article reported that law enforcement served roughly 11,500 geofence warrants on Google in 2020. As technology and policing practices evolve, the issue is expected to generate more litigation. Google has altered some practices—shifting certain location data to users’ devices rather than central servers—to limit disclosures under older policies, but that change does not resolve broader questions about other cloud-stored records or how different companies will respond to government requests.
Google filed a brief that does not pick a definitive side in the dispute but explicitly supports a warrant requirement and argues that digital records deserve protections comparable to physical records. Legal scholars and practitioners have filed amicus briefs on both sides; some, including Orin Kerr, have endorsed aspects of the government’s position. Other experts warn of practical and doctrinal challenges: if remote digital records are treated as wholly shielded from government access, can law enforcement ever obtain digital evidence with a warrant, and if not, how will investigations adapt?
The Court’s forthcoming decision, expected by summer, will clarify how far Fourth Amendment protections extend in an era of pervasive location tracking and whether geofence warrants, as currently used, are a permissible investigative technique or an unconstitutional form of mass surveillance.