The Constitutionality of Geofence Warrants

In our current Information Age, new technologies are expanding faster than our legislatures can keep pace with. This has certainly been the case with “Geofence Warrants,” which are a form of reverse warrant that law enforcement has increasingly relied on to uncover perpetrators of crimes where a suspect may otherwise not be uncovered. Chatrie, the first case to be heard in a Circuit Court regarding geofence warrants, serves as a prime example of the typical context in which these warrants are employed. In Chatrie, over a week, three armed robberies took place at the same bank by what appeared to be the same perpetrator. There was no identifying information about the perpetrator, and the law enforcement office was out of leads for the case. However, it appeared on the surveillance footage of the robbery that the perpetrator had a cellphone in his back pocket. Based on this information, law enforcement sought to obtain a geofence warrant to narrow down the identity of the perpetrator in the hopes that his “Location History” was enabled on his smartphone, revealing his whereabouts and the location data of numerous bystanders at the scene of the crime. There are stark privacy and Fourth Amendment interests at stake concerning the widespread use of these warrants by law enforcement. Because of their novelty, courts have not had much time to intervene. To offer critical guidance in this area, this Article will explore why geofence warrants fit into the “Reasonable Expectation of Privacy” doctrine line of cases related to technology. This Article argues that geofence warrants are inherently a violation of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures, specifically because they lack particularized probable cause and cannot fulfill the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of a “neutral magistrate” due to their novelty and misrepresentations concerning their scope by law enforcement. Throughout this Article, I hope to emphasize that technology will only continue to evolve, and as courts struggle to keep up, we need voices advocating for Fourth Amendment interests and a balance of privacy against safety and security in the face of growing surveillance technology.