A federal judge last week ruled that a cellphone dragnet used to find bank robbery suspects was unconstitutional.
Judge M. Hannah Lauck, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, ruled Thursday that authorities violated the Constitution when they used Google location data to find people who were near the scene of a 2019 bank robbery, NBC News reported.
Lauck said the policing approach, by gathering information on innocent people without evidence that they might be suspects violated the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches.
Similar geofence warrants were used to identify people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Law enforcement authorities say geofence warrants are legal because Google users agree to have their location tracked.
Google released a statement saying the company was reviewing the court’s decision.
“We vigorously protect the privacy of our users, including by pushing back on overly broad requests, while supporting the important work of law enforcement,” a spokesperson, said, NBC News reported.
Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, said Lauck’s “landmark” ruling could lead to more courts declining law enforcement’s requests to use Google location data.
“This is going to be a wake-up call for the judges who have been rubber-stamping these sorts of warrants at the federal and state level,” said Cahn, whose group is a civil rights nonprofit that opposes the use of geofence warrants.
Law enforcement groups have used geofence warrants in cases — from burglaries to murders and sexual assaults — where they have run out of leads using traditional investigation techniques.
Mentioning “google” and “privacy” in the same sentence is so contradictory that it should be editorially eliminated.
Google tracks, just like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other social media sites are ALL in the pocket of federal and state law enforcement, doing WHATEVER they demand. You just don’t hear about 99% of what they are doing.
A secret Service agent told me that every one of those social media companies have given the Secret Service secret unlimited and secret backdoor access to their sites.
Refusal to do so brings down upon them the IRS, harassing “investigations”, and various “persuasive” options the government has at it’s disposal, including the release of embarrassing details, like who likes little boys or spends a lot of money on cocaine, or the exposure of relationships that might ruin them.
As long as there are millions of idiots who are so proud they can tell Alexa to turn on the kitchen lights, the FBI and the rest of the gestapo wanna-be’s will keep building files, tracking everything you say, and knowing exactly where you are at any given time.
Orwell was a prophet, but even he never imagined how easy it would be to keep millions of people on their knees. Happily and proudly on their knees.
God save us.