Cases in which police authorities request geolocation data from service providers relating to the site of a crime are becoming increasingly common. In this type of investigation, the usual order is reversed: instead of starting from a suspect to verify where they were, investigators start from the crime scene and from who passed through it in order to identify suspects only afterward. The legal debate surrounding the technique centers, to a large extent, on the possibility that this kind of request may reach the data of people with no connection to the crime under investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was the question submitted to the United States Supreme Court in Chatrie v. United States<\/em>. The investigation arose from a robbery at a bank branch in Virginia, in which an armed man fled with nearly 200,000 dollars without leaving any leads. With the case at a standstill, the police resorted to a tool known as a geofence warrant \u2014 an order that requires a technology company, in this case Google, to hand over location data for all devices that passed through a defined geographic area within a specific time frame. Google initially identified 19 users in the area around the bank and provided the police with three names whose data indicated they had been at the location; from these, the authorities reached Okello Chatrie, who confessed and was convicted of the crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The central question brought before the Court was whether this type of mass request, made before any individualized suspect exists, is subject to the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, which protects citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures. On June 29, 2026, by a 6-3 vote, with Justice Elena Kagan writing for the Court, it sent the case back to a lower court to decide whether the search was “reasonable” under the Fourth Amendment. Kagan stated that the Fourth Amendment must continue to protect the individual against unjustified government intrusions on their privacy. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel Alito described the majority’s position as an “irresponsible escapade,” accusing it of posing as a great champion of privacy in the digital age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Court did not hold that the use of geofence warrants violates the Fourth Amendment: it did not strike down the technique, but merely remanded to the lower court the analysis of whether that particular search was reasonable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n