Appeals Court Upholds Government’s Use of Google Location Data in Bank Robbery Case

An appellate court on July 9 upheld the government’s use of a geofence warrant to obtain users’ location data from Google in a 2019 Virginia bank robbery case, which led to a suspect being found and charged. The court noted it upheld the warrant based on different reasons than an earlier district court ruling. A geofence warrant requires Google to produce location history data for all users within a specific geographic area during a particular time period, affecting only users who have opted into Google collecting and storing their location data. The appellate ruling stated that obtaining the location data for only two hours’ worth of time such as in this particular case did not violate the suspect’s Fourth Amendment rights, which protect against unreasonable searches and seizures, adding he had “voluntarily exposed” this information to Google by opting into location sharing....