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Drawing lines: geofence warrants and the third-party doctrine

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Abstract

Imagine if your physical movements were tracked by unfathomably powerful computers owned by private companies; the word “dystopia” may come to mind, or perhaps “witchcraft” if you were a Framer of the U.S. Constitution. In reality, Google has been tracking our data, including geolocation data, for years. In 2016, law enforcement officers began exploiting this data by means of “geofences,” a data dump of device identifying data confined in geographic and temporal coordinates. Modern technology often presents challenging questions of law, and Fourth Amendment jurisprudence evolved alongside technology from phone-recordings in Katz and gradually to cell-site location data in Carpenter. However, neither satisfactorily answer the question of whether the Fourth Amendment protects limited amounts of electronic data. This article analyzes the Fourth Amendment’s “third-party doctrine” and its applicability to data derived from geofences. The article ultimately concludes that geolocation data derived from a geofence with a temporal confinement of less than 45 min is protected under the third-party doctrine.

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Notes

  1. Jennifer Valentino-Devries, Tracking Phones, Google Is a Dragnet for the Police, N.Y. Times (Apr. 13, 2019).

  2. Id.

  3. Carpenter v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2206, 2221 (2018) (“there are 396 million cell phone service accounts in the United States, for a Nation of 326 million people”).

  4. Id. at 2211.

  5. Id.

  6. Id. at 2211–12.

  7. Id. at 2220.

  8. Google provides electronic communication services to subscribers and allows subscribers to obtain email accounts at the domain name gmail.com. Subscribers obtain an account by registering with Google and during the registration process, Google asks subscribers to provide basic personal information, including the subscriber’s full name, physical address, telephone numbers and other identifiers, alternative email addresses, and, for paying subscribers, means and source of payment (including any credit or bank account number). Therefore, the computers of Google are likely to contain stored electronic communications (including retrieved and un-retrieved email for Google subscribers) and information concerning subscribers and their use of Google services, such as account access information, email transaction information, and account application information. The company uses this information for location-based advertising and location-based search results. See generally Google LLC, Privacy Policy, https://policies.google.com/?hl=en-US; https://policies.google.com/technologies/location-data?hl=en-US.

  9. Blis, The “Currency” of Data: Quantifying the Value of Consumer Information in 2019 5 (2019) [hereinafter Currency of Data].

  10. Id. at 6.

  11. Id.

  12. 18 U.S.C. § 2703.

  13. “Any provider of telecommunications services, except that such term does not include aggregators of telecommunications services (as defined in section 226 of this title). A telecommunications carrier shall be treated as a common carrier under this chapter only to the extent that it is engaged in providing telecommunications services, except that the Commission shall determine whether the provision of fixed and mobile satellite service shall be treated as common carriage.” 47 U.S.C. § 153.

  14. “Any service which provides to users thereof the ability to send or receive wire or electronic communications.” 18 U.S.C. § 2510.

  15. “Provision to the public of computer storage or processing services by means of an electronic communications system.” 18 U.S.C. § 2711.

  16. 50 U.S.C. § 1881.

  17. See 18 U.S.C. § 2703(f).

  18. See Currency of Data, supra note 9 and accompanying text.

  19. Lawrence Lessig, Reading the Constitution in Cyberspace, 45 Emory L.J. 869, 895–96 (1996).

  20. Reed Sawyers, For Geofences: An Originalist Approach to the Fourth Amendment, 29 Geo. Mason L. Rev. 787 (2022).

  21. Id. at 792.

  22. Id.

  23. Id. The author can however, based on experience, confirm that Google will not comply with geofence D‑Orders and has faced no penalties for its noncompliance.

  24. See generally Cassandra Zietlow, Reverse Location Search Warrants: Law Enforcement’s Transition to ‘Big Brother’, 23 N.C. J. L. & Tech. 669, 673 (arguing that reverse location search warrants categorically fall outside the third-party doctrine).

  25. Id. at 682–83.

  26. Id. See also infra Part II(b)(i).

  27. See Haley Amster & Brett Diehl, Against Geofences, 74 Stan. L. Rev. 385, 388.

  28. See Note, Geofence Warrants and the Fourth Amendment, 134 Harv. L. Rev. 2508, 2528 (2021).

  29. Matter of Search of Info. Stored at Premises Controlled by Google, 481 F. Supp. 3d 730, 737 (N.D. Ill. 2020) (ruling that a geofence warrant for a 45-minute time space was too broad and thus failed the constitutional requirements of particularity) [hereinafter Matter of Google].

  30. Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 238 (1983).

  31. Camara v. Municipal Court of City and County of San Francisco, 387 U.S. 523, 528 (1967).

  32. United States v. Mason, No. 92-CR-1069, 1993 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7672 at *2 (N.D. Ill. June 4, 1993).

  33. United States v. Sanchez-Jara, 889 F.3d 418, 421 (7th Cir. 2018).

  34. See Currency of Data, supra note 9.

  35. This temporal range is relevant to the analysis based on the Matter of Google court’s discussion on particularity. See infra Part III(a)(i).

  36. Some acts which are not searches can become searches based on duration. See infra Part II(c).

  37. U.S. Const. amend. IV.

  38. Id.

  39. United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435, 440 (1976) (quoting Hoffa v. United States, 385 U.S. 293, 301–02 [1996]).

  40. See, e.g., Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967) (recording devices in public telephone booths); Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001) (thermal-imaging equipment); Carpenter v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2206 (2018) (CSLI).

  41. Katz, 389 U.S. at 353.

  42. Id.

  43. See Sawyers, supra notes 20–23 and accompanying text.

  44. Orin S. Kerr, Katz as Originalism, 71 Duke L. J. 1047, 1084 (2022).

  45. United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400, 409 (2012).

  46. Id. at 409–10. In what has become a woefully ironic concurring opinion, Justice Alito described the majority’s use of “18th-century tort law” to decide an issue concerning “21st-century surveillance technique” as “unwise.” Id. at 418–19 (Alito, J., concurring). Justice Alito argued that GPS monitoring in investigations impinges on expectations of privacy, and therefore the case should have been decided under Katz. Id. (Alito, J., concurring).

  47. Id. at 415 (Sotomayor, J., concurring).

  48. 460 U.S. 276, 282 (1983).

  49. Id. at 279.

  50. The majority in Knotts articulated this principal as a matter of scientific enhancement of the senses. Id. at 277 (“Nothing in the Fourth Amendment prohibited the police from augmenting their sensory faculties with such enhancement as science and technology afforded them in this case. There is no indication that the beeper was used in any way to reveal information as to the movement of the chloroform container within the cabin, or in any way that would not have been visible to the naked eye from outside the cabin”).

  51. Thomas Y. Davies, Recovering the Original Fourth Amendment, 98 Mich L. Rev. 547, 553 (1999).

  52. Kyllo, 533 U.S. 27 at 36.

  53. Id. at 30.

  54. Id. at 30–31.

  55. Id. at 40.

  56. Id. at 33 (citing California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207 (1986) and Florida v. Riley, 488 U.S. 445 [1989]).

  57. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. at 209.

  58. Curiously, Riley was published as a plurality opinion whereas Ciraolo was a majority opinion. The apparent discrepancy was the use of a helicopter versus a fixed-wing airplane; the Court apparently felt as if the public had general access to the latter, but not the former.

  59. Troy A. Rule, Airspace in an Age of Drones, 95 B.U. L. Rev. 155, 172.

  60. See Sawyers, supra note 20.

  61. Rule, supra note 59.

  62. Id.

  63. See Investigations and Police Practices, 38 Geo. L. J. Ann. Rev. Crim. Proc. 3, 66 (“Absent consent, only exigencies—such as fear of imminent destruction of evidence, hot pursuit, and immediate threats to the safety of the public or the officers—can justify a warrantless entry into an individual’s home to make an arrest. Courts disapprove of police conduct that creates exigent circumstances used to justify a warrantless arrest in a suspect’s home, but courts will often sustain such arrests when the police can demonstrate that their actions were motivated by legitimate law enforcement needs”) (internal citations omitted).

  64. United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435, 440 (1976).

  65. Carpenter, 138 S. Ct. at 2216 (citing Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 735 [1979]).

  66. Smith, 442 U.S. at 735 (1979).

  67. Id.

  68. Id. at 743.

  69. Id.

  70. Currency of Data, supra note 9, at 5.

  71. Carpenter, 138 S. Ct. at 2217.

  72. Id.

  73. Id. at 2210.

  74. Id.

  75. Matter of Google, supra note 29, at 736.

  76. See Zietlow, supra note 24.

  77. Matter of Google, supra note 28, at 737, n. 4. There is one argument against this which, while not the focus of this article, deserve an honorable mention. Unlike the automatic connection and generation of CSLI when a user steps within a tower’s range, location data is affirmatively shared with Google by the user. Indeed, cell phone applications notify users of the application’s request to track its location data, which the user may deny. Commonly, iPhone users are confronted with an un-closable notification request stating “Allow [application] to track your activity?” to which the user may respond “Ask App Not to Track” or “Allow.” By asking the application not to track, Apple denies the manufacturer access to the system advertising identifier, the number commonly used to track web activity and geolocation data. For an analysis supporting this contention, see United States v. Adkinson, 916 F.3d 605, 608 (7th Cir. 2019), infra note 106 and accompanying text. Apples terms and service describing the above may be found at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212025.

  78. 2019 WL 8227162 (E.D.Va.).

  79. Brief of Amicus Curiae Google LLC at 20–22, 2019 WL 8227162, United States v. Chatrie, No. 3:19-cr-00130-MHL (E.D. Va. Dec. 23, 2019).

  80. Id.

  81. See State v. Muhammad, 194 Wn.2d 577, 592 (Wash. 2019) (“turning off multiple location tracking services built into our cell phones can be a complicated process, and disabling these services render many apps less usable. Or in some cases, completely unusable”).

  82. See, e.g., Zietlow, supra note 24.

  83. Carpenter v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2206, 2217 n.3 (2018). This article accepts in arguendo that CSLI and geolocation data deserve equal scrutiny but argues that the third-party doctrine applies to both forms of data for a limited period.

  84. Id.

  85. See infra Part III(a).

  86. United States v. Soybel, 13 F.4th 584, 587 (7th Cir. 2021).

  87. Id. The Supreme Court denied Soybel’s petition for certiorari. Soybel v. United States, 142 S. Ct. 835 (2022).

  88. United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276, 282 (1983).

  89. Id.

  90. 468 U.S. 705 (1984).

  91. Id.

  92. Id. at 715 (“The case is thus not like Knotts, for there the beeper told the authorities nothing about the interior of Knotts’ cabin”).

  93. 543 U.S. 405 (2004).

  94. Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405, 407 (2005).

  95. Id. at 409.

  96. 575 U.S. 348 (2015).

  97. Id. (internal citations omitted).

  98. Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U.S. 348, 350–51 (2015) (citing Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405, 408 [2005]).

  99. See Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 138–43, 148–49 (1978); Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351–52 (1967).

  100. Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85 (1979).

  101. Id. at 91.

  102. Id.

  103. Id.

  104. Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 91 (1979).

  105. Carpenter v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2206 (2018).

  106. See United States v. Adkinson, 916 F.3d 605, 608 (7th Cir. 2019).

  107. Id.

  108. Id.

  109. The Court rejected the defendant’s argument for a third reason inapplicable to this discussion, in that the wireless carrier voluntarily gave the government the tower dump rather than being compelled to provide it following a warrant. The defendant argued that the wireless carrier was a government agent as a “public utility replacement” and therefore the provision of records was a search. Id. at 610. The Court rejected this position because the wireless carrier acted in its own interests to prevent future robberies of its stores. Id.

  110. Id. (emphasis added).

  111. Id. at 611.

  112. Id.

  113. Matter of Google, supra note 29, at 751.

  114. Id.

  115. Carpenter v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2206, 2217 n. 3 (2018).

  116. Id. Likewise, a twenty-eight-day span of GPS data was too long. See United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400, 413 (2012).

  117. Carpenter, 138 S. Ct. at 2217, 2220.

  118. Id.

  119. Matter of Google, supra note 29, at 736.

  120. Id.

  121. Statement of Corporal Brett Payne, State v. Kohberger, 2011 Ida., No. CR-29-22-2805.

  122. Id.

  123. Id.

  124. Id. In hindsight, a geofence warrant would not have revealed the suspect’s identity, as it appears he turned his phone off for several hours before and after the crime. Nonetheless, CSLI did reveal the suspect’s path of travel between states and actions which potentially illustrate premeditation. Id.

  125. See generally Brian Naylor, Read Trump’s Jan. 6 Speech, A Key Part Of Impeachment Trial, Nat’l Pub. Radio, https://www.jan-6.com/january-6-timeline (last visited Dec. 22, 2022).

  126. U.S. Off. of the Sec’y of Def., Timeline for December 31, 2020–January 6, 2021 (2021). Brian Naylor, Read Trump’s Jan. 6 Speech, A Key Part Of Impeachment Trial, Nat’l Pub. Radio, https://www.jan-6.com/january-6-timeline (last visited Dec. 22, 2022).

  127. Lauren Leatherby et al., How a Presidential Rally Turned Into a Capitol Rampage, N.Y. Times (January 12, 2021).

  128. Id.

  129. See Matter of Google, supra note 28 at 755. (finding a lack of particularity for a geofence search for “individuals who committed or witnessed the offense”).

  130. Covington, T. Burglary Statistics in 2022, The Zebra, July 7, 2022, https://www.thezebra.com/resources/research/burglary-statistics/ (last visited Jan. 6, 2022). This article cites the FBI Crime Data Explorer (CDE), an interactive tool continuously updated with relevant information and statistics concerning crime. The CDE can be found at https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/ (last visited Jan. 6, 2022).

  131. Id.

  132. The fact that over a quarter of U.S. residents utilize security cameras suggests that now, it is even easier to narrow the window of time in which a crime occurred. The presence of such security measures has increased substantially and will likely evolve commensurate with a need for narrower warrants. See generally The State of Safety in America, SafeWise, June 2021, https://www.safewise.com/state-of-safety/ (last visited Jan. 6, 2022).

  133. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 354 (1979).

References

  1. 18 U.S.C. § 2510

  2. 18 U.S.C. § 2703

  3. 18 U.S.C. § 2711

  4. 47 U.S.C. § 153

  5. Blis, The “Currency” of Data: Quantifying the Value of Consumer Information in 2019 5 (2019)

  6. Naylor B Read Trump’s Jan. 6 Speech, A Key Part Of Impeachment Trial, Nat’l Pub. Radio. https://www.jan-6.com/january-6-timeline. Accessed Feb. 3, 2023

  7. Brief of Amicus Curiae Google LLC at 20–22, 2019 WL 8227162, United States v. Chatrie, No. 3:19-cr-00130-MHL (E.D. Va. Dec. 23, 2019)

  8. California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207 (1986)

  9. Camara v. Municipal Court of City and County of San Francisco, 387 U.S. 523, 528 (1967)

  10. Carpenter v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2206, 2221 (2018)

  11. Cassandra Zietlow, Reverse Location Search Warrants: Law Enforcement’s Transition to ‘Big Brother’, 23 N.C. J.L. & Tech. 669, 673

  12. Covington, T. Burglary Statistics in 2022, The Zebra, July 7, 2022, https://www.thezebra.com/resources/research/burglary-statistics/. Accessed Feb. 3, 2023

  13. FBI Crime Data Explorer (CDE). https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/. Accessed Feb. 3, 2023

  14. Florida v. Riley, 488 U.S. 445 (1989)

  15. Haley Amster & Brett Diehl, Against Geofences, 74 Stan. L. Rev. 385, 388

  16. Hoffa v. United States, 385 U.S. 293, 301–02 (1996)

  17. Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405, 407 (2005)

  18. Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 238 (1983)

  19. Investigations and Police Practices, 38 Geo. L.J. Ann. Rev. Crim. Proc. 3, 66

  20. Jennifer Valentino-Devries, Tracking Phones, Google Is a Dragnet for the Police N.Y. Times (Apr. 13, 2019)

  21. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967)

  22. Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001)

  23. Lauren Leatherby et al., How a Presidential Rally Turned Into a Capitol Rampage, N.Y. Times (January 12, 2021).

  24. Lawrence Lessig, Reading the Constitution in Cyberspace, 45 Emory L.J. 869, 895–96 (1996).

  25. Matter of Search of Info. Stored at Premises Controlled by Google, 481 F. Supp. 3d 730, 737 (N.D. Ill. 2020)

  26. Note, Geofence Warrants and the Fourth Amendment, 134 Harv. L. Rev. 2508, 2528 (2021).

  27. Orin S. Kerr, Katz as Originalism, 71 Duke L.J. 1047, 1084 (2022)

  28. Privacy Policy, Google LLC, https://policies.google.com/?hl=en-US; https://policies.google.com/technologies/location-data?hl=en-US.

  29. Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 138–143, 148–149 (1978)

  30. Reed Sawyers, For Geofences: An Originalist Approach to the Fourth Amendment, 29 Geo. Mason L. Rev. 787 (2022).

  31. Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U.S. 348, 350–51 (2015)

  32. Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 735 (1979)

  33. State v. Muhammad, 194 Wn.2d 577, 592 (Wash. 2019)

  34. Statement of Corporal Brett Payne, State v. Kohberger, 2011 Ida., No. CR-29-22-2805

  35. The State of Safety in America, SafeWise, June 2021, https://www.safewise.com/state-of-safety/

  36. Thomas Y. Davies, Recovering the Original Fourth Amendment, 98 Mich L. Rev. 547, 553 (1999).

  37. Troy A. Rule, Airspace in an Age of Drones, 95 B.U.L. Rev. 155, 172

  38. U.S. Const. amend. IV

  39. U.S. Off. of the Sec’y of Def., Timeline for December 31, 2020–January 6, 2021 (2021)

  40. United States v. Adkinson, 916 F.3d 605, 608 (7th Cir. 2019)

  41. United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400, 409 (2012)

  42. United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276, 282 (1983)

  43. United States v. Mason, No. 92-CR-1069, 1993 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7672at *2 (N.D. Ill. June 4, 1993)

  44. United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435, 440 (1976)

  45. United States v. Sanchez-Jara, 889 F.3d 418, 421 (7th Cir. 2018).

  46. United States v. Soybel, 13 F.4th 584, 587 (7th Cir. 2021)

  47. Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85 (1979)

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    Josh A. Roth

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Roth, J.A. Drawing lines: geofence warrants and the third-party doctrine. Int. Cybersecur. Law Rev. 4, 213–233 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1365/s43439-023-00085-y

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