In a blow to law enforcement, the U.S. Supreme Court has voted 6-3 that law enforcement can't just use sweeping "geofence warrants" to collect smartphone location data. Instead, that data requires privacy protection under the fourth amendment, even if the required data only covers a short period of time.
The ruling in question relates to a case from 2019, when Virginia police used a geofence warrant to obtain location data from Android phones near the scene of a bank robbery which saw an armed suspect flee with $195,000. Google initially provided officers with anonymized locations for 19 devices, which police were able to narrow down to nine potential suspects and eventually three identified users.
