> the quintessential problem with these warrants is that they never include a specific user to be identified, only a temporal and geographic location where any given user may turn up post-search
In that case, it's illegal to look in the phone book for names starting with "john" because that's not a specific user.
From the ruling emphasizes a search through the "entire" database as a kind of rummaging through everything in a house, but that's clearly inapt. First, it shouldn't matter whether Google just needs to check an index vs. doing a full scan. Second, there's no reason to assume a digital search has the same privacy implications as a house search. It's just assuming what you're trying to prove. `While the results of a geofence warrant may be narrowly tailored, the search itself is not` is relevant only if the search itself is an invasion of privacy.
So even (especially?) if I preferred the result in this case, that reasoning is not likely to hold up in a conflict with the 4th circuit. It's exactly this kind of weak conflict that gives the Supreme Court too much latitude to draw lines as they see fit.
I agree the situations are different and this situation warrants privacy protection.
However, the court fails to articulate anything close to a workable rule in its reasoning.
Further, because the actual outcome was an upheld search d/t good faith reliance, the finding of unconstitutionality is basically dicta, and would/should be ignored by other districts and even in the same district.
I don't think this ruling offers the protections people want or should have. I think that point stands, however hidden by downvoting.
> In that case, it's illegal to look in the phone book for names starting with "john" because that's not a specific user.
Only if everyone in the phone book has a privacy interest requiring a warrant to breach in the fact that their name was in the phone book. They don't.
But imagine for a second they did. Then your search for "John" in the phone book would have involved flipping through the phone books pages looking for the "John" section, in the process violating the privacy rights of everyones names you looked at to figure out if you where before or after the Johns section. Of course that would be unconstitutional. It would be like trying to figure out where John lived by searching every apartment until you found the apartment with John's diary in it.
> In that case, it's illegal to look in the phone book for names starting with "john" because that's not a specific user.
No. Working with that analogy, this ruling indicates you can't get one warrant that applies to everyone in the book - simply because they are listed in the same geographic area.
A phone-book warrant would not be in harmony with the 4th Amendment.
Does it mean that it would be constitutional if each tower kept its own log? Or then, if the database server collated a separate log for each tower as it went?
How would one-log-per-tower be different from a surveillance video tape?
Hmmm... elements of an answer: there is no doubt more in the decision but from the EFF writeup: (1) "individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the location data", (2) "sensitive information about a person’s associations and allow police to “follow” them into private spaces", (3) "require a provider, almost always Google, to search “the entirety” of its reserve of location data “while law enforcement officials have no idea who they are looking for, or whether the search will even turn up a result.”"
So it sounds like one-log-per-tower would take care of the third point (the warrant would call for 1-4 specific towers or something), but the court still found an expectation of privacy in cell phone location, and an expectation that this sensitive private info might intrude of private spaces. As opposed to a video camera which views a public space.
In that case, it's illegal to look in the phone book for names starting with "john" because that's not a specific user.
From the ruling emphasizes a search through the "entire" database as a kind of rummaging through everything in a house, but that's clearly inapt. First, it shouldn't matter whether Google just needs to check an index vs. doing a full scan. Second, there's no reason to assume a digital search has the same privacy implications as a house search. It's just assuming what you're trying to prove. `While the results of a geofence warrant may be narrowly tailored, the search itself is not` is relevant only if the search itself is an invasion of privacy.
So even (especially?) if I preferred the result in this case, that reasoning is not likely to hold up in a conflict with the 4th circuit. It's exactly this kind of weak conflict that gives the Supreme Court too much latitude to draw lines as they see fit.
edit: sorry, removed disrespect for the EFF