Chatrie v. United States & Geofence Warrants
The legal battle of Chatrie v. United States is a landmark case that serves as a modern-day collision course between police investigative power and the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches. The Supreme Court is set to hear argument on this case on April 27, 2026 which is the day this video was created.
At the heart of the case is the geofence warrant—a digital dragnet that reverses traditional investigative logic. Instead of starting with a suspect and finding their location, police start with a location and find every suspect, and innocent bystander, within it.
The United States Supreme Court is hearing the case which started when a split Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that the government did not conduct a search under the Fourth Amendment when it obtained the defendant's location history data from his service provider in connection with a “geofence” warrant.
The warrant asked for not just his location history but the location history data for all users of mobile devices who were within a 150-meter radius of a credit union 30 minutes before and 30 minutes after it was robbed.
A Current Case
An interesting issue with geofence warrants is that they are available to the prosecution or police but not the defense. We had a case out of Alameda County (Oakland is the most famous city in Alameda County) a few years ago where we claimed that our client was not the person who committed "the crime". I'm using "the crime" to be vague to protect the client's identity. We wanted to show who did the crime. Well, wouldn't it have been nice to get Google to send us the names and addresses of everyone within say - 50 yards of where the crime took place. We could get their pictures and show them around to witnesses. No way that happened. The defense cannot force the prosecution to issue warrants and a subpoena faced the objection of the cell tower providers. California courts decide whether a subpoenaing party has established good cause to enforce a subpoena challenged by a motion to quash by assessing seven factors. Facebook, Inc. v. Superior Court (Touchstone) (2020) 10 Cal.5th 329, 345-347. Wading through those 7 points the Alameda County judge did not find that we had any proof that the actual perpetrator would show up. The subpoena was quashed. We think that if the prosecution got a warrant issued the provider would have complied.
More generically, the geowarrant i/ geofence ssue is a hot potato and smart people in different jurisdictions have differing views.
Fourth Circuit Ruling
The Fourth Circuit concluded that the defendant did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the location history data from his phone. They didn’t find that no one ever has an expectation of privacy in their location. They said he gave up any privacy rights because he voluntarily exposed his location to his provider. Under the third-party doctrine a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information voluntarily turned over to third parties. Also remember that privacy was a key issue in the abortion debate. Roe v Wade focused on an implied right to privacy that the majority found existed in the constitution even though the constitution contained no specific right to privacy language. The overbroad language in the Fourth Amendment may be an implied right to privacy but was Roe v Wade was overturned it is not clear how the Supreme Court will find a right to privacy in the Fourth Amendment when it does not per its recent rulings, exist generally in the constitution.
A criticism of the geowarrant is that it often sweeps up data from innocent bystanders, creating, as noted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a risk of turning innocent people into suspects. It is a core principle of the Fourth Amendment that the warrant must specifically describe the place to be searched and the items to be seized to prevent overbroad, general searches. Of course when the Fourth Amendment was enacted there was no concept of just how easily the government could access personal location data. In fact much of the data that we routinely allow the government to obtain in search warrants would be unthinkable to a person who lived at the birth of our nation. In other words, when we talk about an overbroad warrant we are in the context of a society where privacy is almost non-existent compared to how we lived in the late 17 hundreds when our concepts of freedom and the Bill of Rights were discussed and enacted.
Electronic Freedom Foundation View
The Electronic Freedom Foundation may be criticized by some as being a left wing group but put that aside and consider only their factual arguments. In a published article they state and I quote, .... geofence warrants—which compel companies to provide information on every electronic device in a given area during a given time period—are the digital version of the exploratory rummaging that the drafters of the Fourth Amendment specifically intended to prevent. (We fought against the EFF when they defended the group CAIR against radio host Michael Savage. They defended CAIR's right to republish portions of Savage's radio broadcast in order to criticize what he said. They draw on a vast group of very talented attorneys and their views are almost always rational and well reasoned - even when I disagree.)
Read the EFF's Amicus Brief on Chatri
Unlike typical warrants, geofence warrants do not name a suspect or even target a specific individual or device. Instead, police cast a digital dragnet, demanding location data on every device in a geographic area during a certain time period, regardless of whether the device owner has any connection to the crime under investigation. These searches simultaneously impact the privacy of millions and turn innocent bystanders into suspects, just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. .... Close quote.
Example of When a Geowarrant Might be Useful (Will Cole Allen's Case Justify a Geowarrant?)
There is another side to this though. take the recent case of Cole Tomas Allen and his attack at the White House Correspondent’s dinner. Did he act alone? Where did he keep his weapons? A geowarrant could help answer that question as they can track his movements and that of other people associated with him - in the critical hours between when he left home and got on a train to Washington DC. Is the intrusion on people’s privacy worth the chance that an assistant or other person worked with Allen that day? On the other hand, do you need a geowarrant for that? Probably not, you can track Allen’s specific phone and limit the geowarrant to other phones that got within 100 feet of his. That is a type of geowarrant but not a non-specific very broad warrant. If you went more broadly and tracked all activity in the proximity to his house, that is a slightly different type of geowarrant that is perhaps more suspect. You may find that the Supreme Court makes this type of distinction finding that geowarrants with specific parameters are permissible while those that are useful but not limited are impermissible.
Consider this. The Brennan Center for Justice filed a brief against these warrants and their website makes the following arguments:
First, the brief argues that the Fourth Amendment protects individuals from warrantless surveillance of their movements. Tracking cell phone location data through geofence warrants allows police to travel back in time to reveal an individual’s precise whereabouts — including sensitive locations like their home, work, doctor’s office, and place of worship — in ways that are impossible with traditional investigative techniques. To secure the “privacies of life” against “arbitrary power,” the government must obtain a warrant to collect this electronic location data.
Second, the brief argues that the geofence warrant in this case fails to meet the Fourth Amendment’s probable cause and particularity requirements. Rather than targeting an individual based on particularized suspicion, the geofence warrant gathered location information on a broad swath of people in order to develop that suspicion.
Finally, the brief warns that authorizing this type of geofence warrant would enable a new class of “reverse search” warrants that would chill First Amendment rights to speech and association. We explain how these warrants, for example, may enable dragnet searches for everyone who ran a web search using certain terms, watched a specific video, or issued a prompt to an AI chatbot. Upholding the overbroad geofence warrant risks facilitating those “reverse search” warrants that create immense risks to privacy and First Amendment-protected activities.
READ THE ENTIRE BRENNAN CENTER WRITEUP
So in the Cole Allen case which is more important - finding out if he had any accomplices who interacted with him as he left for the airport or the privacy rights of completely innocent people in the neighborhood? The Chatrie case is much more mundane as a bank robber was caught using the geofence data. In that case the crime while serious, did not involve any attempt to harm others. If you looked at the Chatrie issues with a violent criminal, perhaps a kidnapper for example as the target, would your privacy concerns lessen?
Consider another horrific case where time is of the essence. The kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie screams for a geofence warrant to locate the perpetrator. Honestly, can anyone say that privacy rights are more important than knowing the owner and location of each and every phone in the area at times relevant to the crime? For these reasons it is hard to imagine any U.S. Supreme Court ruling that blanketly bars a geofence (or similar) warrant. There can restrictions and strict requirements for good cause but a complete bar to these warrants would work a terrible injustice in many cases.
California's GeoFence Case
In People v. Meza (2023), the California Court of Appeal held that a warrant targeting multiple areas in Los Angeles violated the Fourth Amendment. The case involved a murder investigation where police used a geofence warrant to compel Google to provide location data for any devices present at six different locations connected to the victim's movements on the day of the crime.
Tech Companies Self Regulate
Of course, Tech companies currently self-regulate the collection and organization of geofence data. Google announced that it would phase out the internal database containing user geolocation data. What Google did was move the location history from Google's computers/servers to the person's phone or device. With this done Google no longer has access to the data.
Tesla keeps data which shows your cars speed and behavior just before a crash. You can also opt out of geo tracking although this can be difficult to actually do. This is something that you can access in case you have a car accident. Where then does voluntary submission to data collection mean that the government can also gain access?
In 2020, Google released a fact sheet revealing that geofence warrants constituted more than 25% of the company’s warrant request
is there a Middle Ground?
The United States argues that geofence warrants are a vital evolution in law enforcement. In this specific case that is before the Supreme Court police were investigating a 2019 bank robbery in Midlothian, Virginia. With no physical leads, they turned to Google’s Location History data. This is a strong argument favoring the usefulness of a geowarrant.
The government relied on the Third-Party Doctrine. They contended that users voluntarily share their location data with Google to use services like Maps. Under established law, once you give information to a third party, you lose a reasonable expectation of privacy. They maintained that in an era where criminals use technology to evade capture, police must be able to use that same technology to identify leads. They caught the perpetrator. So in this case geowarrants were not broadly argued for .... the government argued voluntary waiver.
The Defense’s perspective was predictable. Okello Chatrie’s defense team argued that geofence warrants are general warrants—the exact type of overreach the Founding Fathers sought to prevent.
The Fourth Amendment requires warrants to particularly describe the person or place to be searched. The defense argued that searching everyone in a 17-acre area, including a church near the bank, is the definition of overbroad. They pointed out that this warrant captured data from 19 individuals who had nothing to do with the crime. They argued that police have no right to seize the private data of dozens of innocent people just to see if one might be a criminal.
Finally, there is a Judicial middle ground. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson offered a nuanced conclusion. He was remarkably critical of the warrant, calling it deeply troubling and noting that it lacked sufficient probable cause because it swept up too many innocent people.
However, the judge did not throw out the evidence. He ruled that the police acted in good faith, believing the warrant was legal at the time because the law around geofencing was a legal frontier. However this almost a case specific decision because it provides little guidance for the future.
While the Chatrie case is rather plain vanilla in terms of the type of crime, what if there was an arson that led to the loss of a firefighter’s life. A geofence warrant for all activity in the area of the fire might give you a list of 200 suspects when previously you had no list of suspects whatsoever. Is a geowarrant valid, useful and constitutional under those circumstances? You are seeing that the Chatrie case pits a valuable investigative tool against broad privacy intrusions - where is the line going to be drawn?
In the Fifth Circuit (covering Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas), geofence warrants were ruled categorically unconstitutional in 2024, as they are considered "general warrants" that lack specificity. In the Fourth Circuit which influenced legal standards in other regions like Virginia, courts previously upheld their use, though that is now under Supreme Court review
A recent article in the Regulatory review highlights some of the dangers of geofence warrants, and again I quote General geofence warrants not specifically tailored to uncover evidence of a particular crime in a particular place violate the Fourth Amendment, argues Mary Fan of the University of Washington School of Law in an article. Fan explains that, to be constitutional, a geofence warrant must have “digital probable cause,” meaning that such warrants can only be granted when it is likely that a database controlled by a corporation has evidence of an existing crime. Close quote ...... in other words some geo warrants can be lawful if they have specific purposes and limitations so that they function just like any other search warrant.
In oral arguments Justice Roberts seemed to lean towards allowing these warrants at least with respect to the individual who was tracked - this leaves the issue of intrusions on innocent people whose locations are coincidentally tracked. In response to attorney arguments he commented: “If you don’t want the government to have your location history,” Roberts said to tAttorney Unikowsky, who argued against the search, “you just flip that off.” He continued, “the only reason the government has access to this information is because you decided to make it public. …"
What if an Agency Needs a Geo Warrant Now?
Recently in Contra Costa County including the town of Walnut Creek, there has been a spate of early morning smashing of glass windows of retail stores and the grabbing of items on display (and safes). Assuming you had not photos of the cars and no license plates - how would you identify the suspects? One way is to get cell phone data for the exact moments that break-ins took place at multiple locations. If the same phone shows up more than once you have a likely suspect, especially if the locations are in different areas. The break-ins are taking place at hours when there are not many members of the public on the street although the geo will also capture the location of people who live in the area who might just be asleep in their own homes. So necessarily the warrants will capture data that is not only that of the criminal.
As the case is pending law enforcement has a tough choice. Do they seek Geo warrants? If it is granted and the Supreme Court rules that these warrants are invalid will the case be lost or parts of the case tainted? Traditionally warrants are overbroad if they Lack Particularity if they fail to describe with reasonable precision the places to be searched or items to be seized. As an example an overbroad warrant may authorize a search for "all files," "any and all records," "any harmful substances," or "all electronic devices" without narrowing the scope to a specific crime. Is there a way that a geo warrant can be narrowed so that it fits into these traditional categories. There is the precedent of Digital Overbreadth: This is where a digital warrant that allows searching all files on a computer, rather than specific, relevant documents may be too broad. It would see that all geofence requests are overbroad since it seeks all (of a type of data) within the "fence" area. So if an agency needs a warrant now it needs to be very careful to tailor the scope so that an eventual partially negative or restrictive ruling by the Supreme Court may be survivable with a carefully drawn warrant.
Even before the Supreme Court rules on Geofence law, courts have been restricting the scope of electronic warrants. In United States v. Kow, 58 F.3d 423 (9th Cir.1995), the alleged crime was tax fraud and the warrant authorizing “the seizure of virtually every document and computer file” at a video distributing company was unconstitutionally broad and generic because there was no limit on which documents could be seized or how they related to the criminal activity at issue. More generically the law for overbreath is this:
"In examining whether the warrant here is overbroad, the Court considers three factors:
(1) whether probable cause existed to seize all items of a category described in the warrant; (2) whether the warrant set forth objective standards by which executing officers could differentiate items subject to seizure from those which were not; and (3) whether the government could have described the items more particularly in light of the information available"
United States v. Roberts (D. Nev. 2019) 430 F.Supp.3d 693, 717
Another excellent and useful discussion of scope is found in Center Art Galleries-Hawaii, Inc. v. U.S. (9th Cir. 1989) 875 F.2d 74.
"We, review a warrant's alleged overbreadth de novo. United States v. McLaughlin, 851 F.2d 283, 285 (9th Cir.1988). “Only a warrant ‘particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized’ is valid. U.S. Const. amend. IV.” United States v. Cardwell, 680 F.2d 75, 77 (9th Cir.1982). “The specificity required in a warrant varies depending on the circumstances of the case and the type of items involved.” United States v. Spilotro, 800 F.2d 959, 963 (9th Cir.1986); McLaughlin, 851 F.2d at 285; Cardwell, 680 F.2d at 78 (courts must “consider the totality of circumstances in determining the validity of a warrant”). As we explained in Spilotro:
In determining whether a description is sufficiently precise, we have concentrated on one or more of the following: (1) whether probable cause exists to seize all items of a particular type described in the warrant, (2) whether the warrant sets out objective standards by which executing officers can differentiate items subject to seizure from those which are not, and (3) whether the government was able to describe the items more particularly in light of the information available to it at the time the warrant was issued."
Center Art Galleries-Hawaii, Inc. v. U.S. (9th Cir. 1989) 875 F.2d 747, 749
So, if a geowarrant is necessary, there is a long line of cases (such as those above) which can help the agency narrow the scope so that a geowarrant and its fence is just a different type of electronic data warrant - and hence it will likely survive any Supreme Court ruling in the future.
Other Uses - Broader Uses with AI
The danger of geo warrants is that they can be so broad that they uncover crimes, political conduct and other matters that would not otherwise be known to law enforcement. While uncovering crimes is good on the surface, the ability of the government to snoop on everyone at anytime in the guise of uncovering crime is a huge blow to personal privacy. Keep in mind that the Chatrie issue is broader than what is written here as I outline the issues before the Supreme Court. AI can process geo data and integrate it with the vast amounts of other data that it has access to. ESRI talks about "Geospatial AI" saying that "As problems become more complex, geographic information system (GIS) software enriched with AI is the key technology to meet the moment." Its webpage gives an example:
Microsoft partnered with Esri and Impact Observatory to build an AI-powered land-cover map. Geospatial AI enables automated land-use monitoring at 10-meter resolution, significantly increasing the scale and frequency of global observations compared to previous methods. The capability will help answer pressing questions about the human footprint, weather pattern changes, and environmental issues.
While this is a wonderful use of the data it also shows how artificial intelligence can use geodata to create vastly more detailed views of an individual's movement, conduct and perhaps thoughts and beliefs.
When the Supreme Court publishes its decision there will be a flurry of postings explaining the case. Right now the most technical but well written and detailed discussion is the government publication:
Geofence and Keyword Searches: Reverse Warrants and the Fourth Amendment
If you are a lawyer who has a geofence issue and are waiting for Chatrie, you obviously will raise Chatrie, track the briefs so you are pleading within the ultimate decision but the above publication is broader than just Chatrie and it is worth reading/skimming to see if there are other points worth raising. Note to non-lawyers - in the legal profession sharing ideas and reading publications like the Geofence/Keyword article are a form of collaboration and very commonly used as a tool to develop issues in a case. I am often impressed by just how brilliant other lawyers are and it is always an honor to read their work and adopt it to my cases. (I hope the same can be said of what I publish.)
Law Office of Daniel Horowitz
The Law office of Daniel Horowitz focuses on cutting edge legal issues such as the geofence limitations, mental state defenses for crimes and technical defenses for complex fraud cases such as the historic case of United States versus former Ukraine prime minister Pavel Lazarenko. If you are facing federal or state criminal charges, contact Daniel Horowitz at (925) 283-1863
