US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

I always like to mention how Paula Broadwell was identified as David Petraeus' mistress as it's a good example of how even without a phone you can still be identified.

- FBI had three distinct IPs linked to emails

- They geolocated those back to 3 different hotels

- They pulled the guest list from each of the hotels

- Did a "join" on them and the only guest at all 3 was Broadwell

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Broadwell#Petraeus_affai...

If it is reasonable to have your privacy in a public place, does this mean that products like Flock which indiscriminately violate your privacy would now require a warrant for law enforcement to access (currently they do not)?

From https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/court-rules-that-law-enfo...

Additional details:

> The information that Google provided to law enforcement officials came in three tranches. First, Google gave law enforcement officials a list of the 19 accounts (but without the names attached to those accounts) linked to devices that were within 150 meters of the bank during the 30 minutes before and after the robbery. Second, based on that list of 19 accounts, the government asked for additional information about nine accounts that were in the area during a two-hour period. At the third step, a detective asked for, and received, the names and information associated with three accounts – one of which was Chatrie’s.

> Relying on the location data, law enforcement officials obtained a warrant to search two residences linked to Chatrie, where they found almost $100,000 of the stolen cash, a gun, and demand notes.

> Prosecutors charged Chatrie with bank robbery. He asked the trial judge to bar prosecutors from using the evidence obtained as a result of the geofence warrant at his trial, arguing that the warrant violated the Fourth Amendment.

> A federal district judge agreed that the warrant in Chatrie’s case did not have the kind of probable cause and specificity that the Fourth Amendment requires. However, she nonetheless allowed the prosecutors to use the evidence, reasoning that even if there had been a violation of the Fourth Amendment, law enforcement officials had acted in good faith.

Link to ruling:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-112_0am4.pdf

> ation history” feature that documented his location every few minutes.

Google removed this feature last year because they were tired of dealing with these warrants. Now your devices each store their own location history without centralisation.

Of course Alito and Thomas would have allowed the government unlimited power. I am bit surprised to see Barret in the minority of this one.

PDF of the full decision: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-112_0am4.pdf

IANAL, what are the practical implications of this? I assume the outcome is police would first need probable cause to suspect a specific person of a crime, and then get a warrant for that person's location. Am I wrong?

Excellent, I wonder how this might impact things like this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48467712

good. Of course the precise language of the ruling matters, but good.

What if they purchase the information from a company peddling it rather than compelling cell phone companies to hand it over?

Birthright citizenship decision coming tomorrow.

rare scotus W, but i strongly suspect that because this data is "owned" by someone other than the people that generated it that said owners will simply choose to voluntarily cooperate with government inquiries 100% of the time. You can suppress information if the government unconstitutionally compels google to turn it over, but I don't believe that you as a defendant could push to exclude evidence if it was willingly turned over by a third party that had the right to have it.