Chatrie v. United States

The Liberty Justice Center has filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court case Chatrie v. United States, urging the Court to strike down the use of “geofence” warrants. These digital dragnets allow law enforcement to compel tech companies like Google to turn over the location data of every person within a specific area during a specific timeframe. By their very nature, these warrants treat every person in the vicinity of a crime as a suspect, regardless of whether there is any individualized evidence against them.

Our brief argues that geofence warrants are the modern-day equivalent of the “general warrants” the Founding Fathers specifically sought to outlaw with the Fourth Amendment. In the 18th century, British officials used “writs of assistance” to conduct broad, indiscriminate searches of homes and businesses. Today, the government uses geofence warrants to perform the same kind of “indiscriminate rummaging”—only now, they are searching our digital lives and private movements instead of our physical drawers.

These warrants are based on a precarious chain of “hunches” rather than the “probable cause” required by the Constitution. Investigators must guess that a suspect had a phone, that the phone was tracking data, and that they have served the right company. If any of these guesses are wrong, the search fails to find a suspect but succeeds in violating the privacy of every innocent bystander who happened to be caught in the crosshairs.

Furthermore, this technology is dangerously unreliable. Data shows that geofence results are often inaccurate, sometimes placing people inside a crime scene when they were actually blocks away. History is full of “iron-clad” forensic techniques—from hair analysis to bite-mark evidence—that were later proven to be scientifically unsound. Allowing the government to arrest and prosecute citizens based on imprecise digital estimates creates a massive risk of wrongful convictions.

“The government is not entitled to track all of us for our own good,” said Reilly Stephens, Director of Amicus Practice at the Liberty Justice Center. “Dragnet geofence warrants toss anyone with a phone in their pocket in the same bucket, subjecting the population to systematic invasions of privacy for government convenience. We hope the court clarifies that the Fourth Amendment’s protections apply to this technology as well.”

The Liberty Justice Center is committed to ensuring that new technology does not become a loophole for government overreach. We are asking the Supreme Court to uphold the Fourth Amendment’s requirements of particularity and probable cause, protecting the private movements of all Americans from being treated as a Playground for government surveillance.