Skip to main content

Circuit Split Alert: Fourth and Fifth Circuits Split on Geofence Warrant Constitutionality

Published on:  

In July, the Fourth Circuit (over a dissent) held that "geofence" warrants ordering Google to provide law enforcement with information about every account holder who enters a particular area in a particular time period are totally cool under the Fourth Amendment. But wait! A mere month later, here comes the Fifth Circuit to tell us that these same warrants are, in fact, totally bogus under the Fourth Amendment! This problem can only be solved by SCOTUS (or by Google, which has apparently changed the way it stores data to put a stop to these warrants no matter what the courts say).