Supreme Court rules geofence warrants are protected by privacy rights

- The Supreme Court ruled that geofence warrants (which force tech companies like Google to hand over data on all devices in a specific area during a specific time period) are subject to Fourth Amendment privacy protections, meaning police need a warrant based on probable cause — but also that such searches must now meet a higher constitutional bar. - Geofence warrants are a relatively new investigative tool where police ask for location data on every device near a crime scene; critics call them "digital dragnets" because they sweep up data on innocent bystanders, not just suspects. - The ruling builds on the Court's 2018 *Carpenter v. United States* decision, which held that the government generally needs a warrant to access long-term cell phone location records, recognizing that digital tracking implicates privacy even when the data is held by a third party. - This is a significant win for privacy advocates; tech companies like Google had received thousands of these warrants each year, with no clear legal standard — the Court now requires them to be "precise" and "particularized" rather than blanket sweeps of an area.