The Supreme Court case that could redefine your digital privacy

But more importantly, the case in question could make it easier for bad actors to frame you for a crime.  Just because you are in the area of a crime does not mean you are in anyway involved in the crime as either a criminal or witness.  But say police are the ones actually involved in the crime.  The data from Geofencing could help them frame a person for the crime they committed. Or maybe not the police, or maybe just a hacker group.

In Virginia, law enforcement employed a method known as geofencing to access Google’s databases to determine the individuals who were in proximity to the site of a bank robbery in Midlothian. During this incident, a robber brandished a firearm and made off with a sum of $195,000.

Dina Jazby:

Let me tell you something infuriating about geofencing. It’s a trick the government uses to create a virtual prison around a location where a crime happened. They don’t even have the decency to search a home or an office like they should. No, instead, they go and wring their hands to get a warrant that forces a tech company to sift through its endless sea of data. They demand to know who was unlucky enough to be within that virtual prison at the time the crime occurred. It’s outrageous! They utilize technology to invade our privacy, trampling over civil liberties just to identify a few faces among millions. How dare they treat us like this!

The technique is currently facing legal examination due to the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches of individuals, their homes, documents, and belongings, except when law enforcement secures a warrant issued by an impartial magistrate and when the search is intended to gather specific evidence of a crime.

The issue presented to the U.S. Supreme Court revolves around whether geofencing is a clever innovation, reminiscent of Orwellian concepts, or if it embodies both traits. Ultimately, the question at hand is its constitutionality.

“Son, if you were not robbing the bank, why were you in the bank?”
“Well sir, I was in the bank’s restroom. Totally innocent. Taking a piss.”
“Why the bank’s restroom?”
“Uhn, uh, I, it was there.”