CriticalSecurity & Privacy
You can get dragged into a police investigation by proximity alone — for now
The Supreme Court is deciding whether police can use 'geofence warrants' to access location data from tech companies without identifying a specific suspect, potentially allowing mass surveillance based on proximity alone. A ruling against warrant protections could expose all employees and customers to involuntary inclusion in criminal investigations through data held by third parties like Google, Uber, and Snap, fundamentally altering privacy expectations for location-aware services. IT organizations must prepare for either scenario: stricter data retention and access controls if warrants are required, or expanded law enforcement requests if geofence searches are deemed constitutional.
A years-old bank heist may soon have major privacy implications for every American who owns a cellphone. On Monday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Chatrie v. United States, a case involving police's use of controversial "geofence warrants" to find and arrest Okello Chatrie, the suspect of a 2019 bank robbery outside Richmond, Virginia. At stake is how private your location data - and any other information you store with a large tech company - actually is. Chatrie was tracked down via the Location History feature on Google Maps, which can identify a person's location within three meters and refreshes every two minutes. Police served G … Read the full story at The Verge.