Links to My Posts on Chatrie v. United States, the Geofence Warrant Case

Fourteen posts in all, from 2022 to the present.

With the Supreme Court set to hear argument in the geofence warrant case, Chatrie v. United States, on Monday, I thought I would provide links to all my posts relating to the case and the issues over the years.  Here they are, in reverse chronological order:

1. The Difficulty of the Search Question: More Thoughts on Chatrie, April 24, 2026.

2. The Slowing of Fourth Amendment Law, and Now Advisory Opinions: A Comment on Chatrie v. United States, April 16, 2026.

3. A Narrow Resolution on Geofence Warrants?: A Thought on Chatrie, April 14, 2026.

4. My Amicus Brief in the Geofence Warrant Case, Chatrie v. United States, April 1, 2026.

5. The Carpenter Adjustment, March 1, 2026.

6. Final Version, Data Scanning and the Fourth Amendment, February 24, 2026.

7. The Fourth Circuit's Geofence Warrant Case Ends Not With a Bang But a Whisper, March 2, 2025.

8. Fourth Circuit Votes to Rehear Its Geofence Warrant Case, November 1, 2024.

9. The ACLU's Response to My Post on the Fifth Circuit's Smith Ruling—And My Reply to the ACLU, August 16, 2024.

10. The Fifth Circuit Shuts Down Geofence Warrants—and Maybe a Lot More, August 13, 2024.

11. Accessing Google Location History Records Is Not a Search — At Least When Limited — Fourth Circuit Rules, July 10, 2024.

12. Did Google Just Defeat Every Geofence Warrant?, December 12, 2023.

13. The First Geofence Warrant Case Reaches a Federal Court of Appeals, December 9, 2023.

14. The Fourth Amendment and Geofence Warrants: A Critical Look at United States v. Chatrie, March 11, 2022.

Comments

[MollyGodiva]

The time has come to end the third-party doctrine. Given it is nearly impossible to own a cell phone or browse the internet in a way that you don't give personal information to companies.

And of course this is a general warrant. It literally is searching the private information of people without any individual suspicion at all.

[Area Man]

1. Geofence warrants are warrants. So the third-party doctrine is not really relevant here.

2. These aren’t general warrants because they specify what’s to be searched, i.e., Google’s database of cell phones in a specific location at a specific time.

3. A criminal defendant wouldn’t have standing to challenge the search of other people’s cell-phone records.

This is just a bunch of histrionics about nothing. It’s really no different than the police getting a warrant for security-camera footage of a particular are at a particular time.

[Krayt]

Why wouldn't a criminal defendant have standing to challenge a general fishing expedition warrant that, but for its core reason, fishing, would not have ensnared him?

I've no love for criminals, but government misuse of investigative and spy power is the vastly bigger crime in history. Half of humanity labors under it still, and half of the rest under nominal democracy but open pervasive corruption.

[Area Man]

I really hope the Court addresses the advisory nature of this case. The defendant can’t get relief here no matter how the Court rules. That seems to be the very definition of an advisory opinion.