The US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is considering the United States v. Chatrie case revolving around dragnet-style geofence surveillance, has announced it will revisit its original decision that stated a geofence warrant issued in connection to a bank robbery did not represent a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
Specifically, the appellate court first ruled that regardless of the fact the warrant was used to gain access to location data belonging to all those who happened to be in the busy area during the commission of the crime – this should not be treated as a search.
Related: Geofence Warrants Are Dangerous For Everyone
The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution is there to prevent the government from conducting unreasonable searches and seizures.
Initially, the court found that Okello Chatrie was not entitled to protections provided by this amendment, since he “voluntarily exposed” (i.e., turned on the location feature on his device) to Google, which then responded to the warrant by handing over the data to law enforcement.
However, in August, the Fifth Circuit ruled, in a different case, that geofence warrants are intrinsically unconstitutional.
While it originally decided the use of such a warrant, in this case, was constitutional, the Fourth Circuit at the time also expressed concern over the nature of capturing location data from everyone finding themselves in a physical area during a specific period of time since this results in essentially treating all those people as suspects – even though the police have no previously established reason to do so.
“Indeed, the very point of the geofence intrusion is to identify persons whose existence was unknown to police before the search,” stated the decision issued in July.
However, the Fourth Circuit still ruled that Chatrie’s rights were not violated, and based this on the amount of time the geofence warrant covered – “only” two hours – and the suspect’s “voluntarily exposure” of his personal data.
The case that is now in the appeals stage goes back to a 2019 bank robbery, that saw Chatrie, who protested his innocence, indicted for the crime.
Chatrie in 2022 asked a district court to suppress evidence obtained through the geofence warrant, but this failed.
He later appealed, seeking to have the practice declared a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights.
