Proximity Alone Can Drag You Into a Police Investigation

A decades-old bank robbery could reshape the digital privacy rights of every American who carries a smartphone. This week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Chatrie v. United States, a pivotal case that challenges the legality of geofence warrants,a tool law enforcement used to identify and arrest Okello Chatrie in connection with a 2019 bank heist near Richmond, Virginia. The central question is how much constitutional protection your location data,and any other personal information stored with major tech firms,truly deserves.

Investigators tracked Chatrie using Google Maps’ Location History feature, which pinpoints a user’s position within three meters and updates every two minutes. Police obtained a warrant demanding data on every individual within 300 meters of the Call Federal Credit Union during the robbery. Subsequent requests narrowed the pool until Chatrie emerged as the primary suspect.

Chatrie’s legal team argues that this geofence inquiry amounted to an unreasonable search and seizure, violating the Fourth Amendment. A federal district court initially agreed, finding that police lacked probable cause for such a warrant. Yet the court ultimately sided with the government under the “good faith exception,” allowing the unconstitutional search to stand. A federal appeals court went further, ruling that no Fourth Amendment violation occurred because Chatrie voluntarily shared his location data with Google. The Supreme Court will deliver its verdict in the coming months.

Google stopped storing Maps Location History in the cloud in 2024, citing privacy concerns,a move that prompted some justices to question the case’s relevance. “This involves a Google feature that doesn’t exist any longer,” Justice Samuel Alito remarked during oral arguments. “You’re asking for a law review article on a subject that is largely unexplored by our precedents.”

But location tracking extends far beyond Google. Companies like Uber, Lyft, and Snap, along with countless other apps, continuously monitor and store user whereabouts. “Chatrie could have fairly major implications in other digital search cases, especially ‘reverse searches’ like this one where police do not have an identified suspect, account, or device,” said Andrew Crocker, surveillance litigation director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed an amicus brief.

Detectives turned to a geofence warrant after hitting a dead end in the 2019 robbery investigation. Google initially provided semi-anonymized data on 19 users, according to The New Republic. The lead detective then requested details on nine accounts without explaining his selection criteria, and later asked Google to de-anonymize three of them. That trail led directly to Chatrie.

Chatrie’s attorney, Adam Unikowsky, characterized these actions as “bad police work.” Some justices disagreed. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, for instance, said the police work in this case “should be applauded.”

A core issue is whether accessing geofence information constitutes a “search” under the Fourth Amendment. The court typically uses two tests, explained Brent Skorup, a legal fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, which also submitted an amicus brief. The first examines property interests,whether a trespass occurred, such as searching a home or a diary. The second asks whether basic privacy rights were violated, even without property at stake.

Skorup noted that Chatrie’s argument frames his location history as personal property held by Google in a virtual locker,much like a bank holds a customer’s money. “We give our property to third parties all the time,” Skorup said. “If you mail a letter or put something in a safe deposit box, you still own the property even if you’re entrusting it to others.”

During Monday’s arguments, most justices appeared skeptical of the property argument. However, Chatrie’s team also invoked the Katz test, established in Katz v. United States. Under that precedent, a search can occur if it violates a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy,even without property involvement. Examples include police bugging a telephone booth or obtaining cellphone tower records without a warrant. The latter was central to Carpenter v. United States (2018), where the court ruled that police generally need a warrant to access cellphone tower location records.

Carpenter may serve as a precedent for Chatrie, but the court’s composition has shifted dramatically since 2018. That case split the justices 5-4 in favor of a warrant requirement. Two of those majority justices have since left: Anthony Kennedy retired in 2018, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in 2020. Their replacements, both appointed by President Donald Trump, tend to side with the government. Still, a conservative bench doesn’t guarantee a win for the administration.

Chief Justice John Roberts noted that users could opt out of Location History,“If you don’t want the government to have your location history, you just flip that off,” he said. Yet he also pressed the government’s attorney on the broader implications. “What’s to prevent the government from using this to find out the identities of everyone at a particular church, a particular political organization?” Roberts asked. “What are the restraints that would prevent that from becoming a problem?” In 2020, police used geofence warrants to investigate protesters during Black Lives Matter demonstrations in Kenosha, Wisconsin, searching for an arson suspect.

“Chatrie is making a very broad argument that, essentially, some databases are too large to search,even with a warrant,” said Stanford Law School professor Orin Kerr. “If the Court were to accept that, it would have lots of implications: It would presumably strike down all warrants for Google search terms, tower dumps, and other technologies.”

Although police did obtain a warrant for the location data that led to Chatrie, the government argued they didn’t need one,a position some justices found troubling.

“The stakes are quite large” in Chatrie, Skorup said, extending far beyond a discontinued Google feature or even location tracking. “A lot of the issues here apply to other areas. Location history is one factor, but each of us,most of us,have our personal, private records stored with a large tech company.”

“They say location is different,” Skorup added, summarizing the government’s argument. “If the government is correct that no searches occur when you turn records over to a large digital company, the government could get all these records without a warrant, and then the Fourth Amendment is rendered quite hollow if that’s the case.”