WASHINGTON — A man carrying a gun and a cellphone entered a federal credit union in a small town in central Virginia in May 2019 and demanded cash.
He left with $195,000 in a bag and no clue to his identity. But his smartphone was keeping track of him.
What happened next could yield a landmark ruling from the Supreme Court on the 4th Amendment and its restrictions against “unreasonable searches.”
Typically, police use tips or leads to find suspects, then seek a search warrant from a judge to enter a house or other private area to seize the evidence that can prove a crime.
Civil libertarians say the new “digital dragnets” work in reverse.
“It’s grab the data and search first. Suspicion later. That’s opposite of how our system has worked, and it’s really dangerous,” said Jake Laperruque, an attorney for the Center for Democracy & Technology.
But these new data scans can be effective in finding criminals.
Lacking leads in the Virginia bank robbery, a police detective turned to what one judge in the case called a “groundbreaking investigative tool … enabling the relentless collection of eerily precise location data.”
Cellphones can be tracked through towers, and Google stored this location history data for hundreds of millions of users. The detective sent Google a demand for information known as a “geofence warrant,” referring to a virtual fence around a particular geographic area at a specific time.
The officer sought phones that were within 150 yards of the bank during the hour of the robbery. He used that data to locate Okello Chatrie, then obtained a search warrant of his home where the cash and the holdup notes were found.
Chatrie entered a conditional guilty plea, but the Supreme Court will hear his appeal on April 27.
The justices agreed to decide whether geofence warrants violate the 4th Amendment.
The outcome may go beyond location tracking. At issue more broadly is the legal status of the vast amount of privately stored data that can be easily scanned.
This may include words or phrases found in Google searches or in emails. For example, investigators may want to know who searched for a particular address in the weeks before an arson or a murder took place there or who searched for information on making a particular type of bomb.
Judges are deeply divided on how this fits with the 4th Amendment.
Two years ago, the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans ruled “geofence warrants are general warrants categorically prohibited by the 4th Amendment.”
Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the court’s liberals in a 4th Amendment privacy case in 2018.
(Alex Wong / Getty Images)
Historians of the 4th Amendment say the constitutional ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures” arose from the anger in the American colonies over British officers using general warrants to search homes and stores even when they had no reason to suspect any particular person of wrongdoing.
The National Assn. of Criminal Defense Lawyers relies on that contention in opposing geofence warrants.
Its lawyers argued the government obtained Chatrie’s “private location information … with an unconstitutional general warrant that compelled Google to conduct a fishing expedition through millions of Google accounts, without any basis for believing that any one of them would contain incriminating evidence.”
Meanwhile, the more liberal 4th Circuit in Virginia divided 7-7 to reject Chatrie’s appeal. Several judges explained the law was not clear, and the police officer had done nothing wrong.
“There was no search here,” Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson wrote in a concurring opinion that defended the use of this tracking data.
He pointed to Supreme Court rulings in the 1970s declaring that check records held by a bank or dialing records held by a phone company were not private and could be searched by investigators without a warrant.
Chatrie had agreed to having his location records held by Google. If financial records for several months are not private, the judge wrote, “surely this request for a two-hour snapshot of one’s public movements” is not private either.
Google changed its policy in 2023 and no longer stores location history data for all of its users. But cellphone carriers continue to receive warrants that seek tracking data.
Wilkinson, a prominent conservative from the Reagan era, also argued it would be a mistake for the courts to “frustrate law enforcement’s ability to keep pace with tech-savvy criminals” or cause “more cold cases to go unsolved. Think of a murder where the culprit leaves behind his encrypted phone and nothing else. No fingerprints, no witnesses, no murder weapon. But because the killer allowed Google to track his location, a geofence warrant can crack the case,” he wrote.
Judges in Los Angeles upheld the use of a geofence warrant to find and convict two men for a robbery and murder in a bank parking lot in Paramount.
The victim, Adbadalla Thabet, collected cash from gas stations in Downey, Bellflower, Compton and Lynwood early in the morning before driving to the bank.
After he was robbed and shot, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s detective found video surveillance that showed he had been followed by two cars whose license plates could not be seen.
The detective then sought a geofence warrant from a Superior Court judge that asked Google for location data for six designated spots on the morning of the murder.
That led to the identification of Daniel Meza and Walter Meneses, who pleaded guilty to the crimes. A California Court of Appeal rejected their 4th Amendment claim in 2023, even though the judges said they had legal doubts about the “novelty of the particular surveillance technique at issue.”
The Supreme Court has also been split on how to apply the 4th Amendment to new types of surveillance.
By a 5-4 vote, the court in 2018 ruled the FBI should have obtained a search warrant before it required a cellphone company to turn over 127 days of records for Timothy Carpenter, a suspect in a series of store robberies in Michigan.
The data confirmed Carpenter was nearby when four of the stores were robbed.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts, joined by four liberal justices, said this lengthy surveillance violated privacy rights protected by the 4th Amendment.
But he described the Carpenter decision as “narrow” because it turned on the many weeks of surveillance data.
In dissent, four conservatives questioned how tracking someone’s driving violates their privacy. Surveillance cameras and license plate readers are commonly used by investigators and have rarely been challenged.
Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer relies on that argument in his defense of Chatrie’s conviction. “An individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in movements that anyone could see,” he wrote.
The justices will issue a decision by the end of June.
A LOVE Island star has been forced to address backlash from fans, who slammed his business’s “shocking customer service.”
Sean Stone shot to fame after appearing on series 11 of the summer dating show before he most recently made a comeback on All Stars in January.
Sign up for the Showbiz newsletter
Thank you!
Love Island’s Sean Stone was forced to apologise for his business’s ‘shocking customer service’Credit: Tiktok/@sweet_deliveryThe reality star launched his business back in 2019Credit: instagram/@seanstone__Sean shot to fame on the ITV summer dating show Love IslandCredit: Shutterstock Editorial
The 26-year-old, dubbed the “Candyman,” has owned sweet business, Sweet Delivery since 2019.
His business journey started in the back of his VW Polo, where he sold pick and mix out of pizza boxes in his local area, Hertford.
But now, it seems the TV star has faced a slew of backlash from fans who are simply not happy with the business’s customer service.
Taking to TikTok Sean was forced to apologise for his business’s mishaps.
He said: “Our customer service has been shocking. I sincerely apologise for this. Recently we’ve had a large amount of orders come through the door, where to be honest we had a system in place for our customer service but there was not enough time and effort put into that.
“However, I have got some exciting news we now have a dedicated staff member that will be working Monday to Friday on all your customer queries.”
Despite the addition of a new staff member, fans are still waiting to hear back on their orders.
Sean continued: “Now I know there’s some of you still waiting to hear back from us; I do kindly ask as annoyed as you may be please send us another email.”
The Islander then confessed: “If I’m being honest it’s been an eye-opener for myself to see how important customer service is. I do apologise to anyone being upset and frustrated that they haven’t received their order yet.
“I’m making a change and it’s going to be an amazing change moving forward.”
The 26-year-old told fans he had hired another staff member to help with customer serviceCredit: Tiktok/@sweet_delivery
Fans in the comments of his apology video were very divided.
One fan penned: “Honestly this kind of accountability is really refreshing to see, and it’s clear you’ve taken the feedback seriously and put steps in place to fix things…”
Another fan wrote: “Are you for real! How can you not realise customer service is important it’s what makes and breaks a business.”
A third person said: “Well said Sean, holding your hands up is always the best way.”
Meanwhile, a fourth fan added: “I think you just blew up faster than you thought you would.”
Sean returned from the Love Island villa back in February and after a short break in Paris with his new girlfriend Lucinda Strafford, who he met on the show, he has been back to business.
Strictly Come Dancing’s Vito Coppola sparked a mixed reaction from viewers following his stint on Saturday Kitchen.
The popular BBC programme returned to our screens on Saturday morning (March 28), with Matt Tebbutt once again taking the reins.
Joining Matt on the show were culinary experts Theo Randall, Samin Nosrat and drinks connoisseur Helen McGinn. Strictly star Vito also popped in to whip up a dish, while singer Self Esteem, also known as Rebecca Lucy Taylor, made an appearance – with viewers voting on whether she would experience her version of food heaven or food hell.
However, it’s safe to say that Vito was the one who got tongues wagging, as some viewers seemed divided over the dancer’s presence on the show, with a few taking issue with his loud speaking.
On X, one viewer remarked: “Can’t stand the screeching at this time of the morning.” Another jested: “Can you speak a bit louder please – they can’t quite hear you in Naples…”, reports the Express.
A third wrote: “Vito should stick to dancing and you just know the miserable blonde guest is getting hell.”
Nevertheless, not all feedback was negative as other viewers rallied behind Vito, with one person commenting: “Such happy, bubbly chefs on today. Especially the lovely @Vito__Coppola Food looks delicious too.”
Another fan wrote: “Love Vito.” A third enthused: “Vito seems like such a lovely, upbeat fella.”
This follows Matt Tebbutt’s return to Saturday Kitchen this month after spending some time in Australia. Earlier in March, audiences saw The One Show’sAlex Jones take the presenter’s chair as she was accompanied by Mike Reid, Adejoké Bakare, Bryn Williams and special guest Phil Wang.
While Matt appeared on the programme the previous week, the BBC star confirmed it was a pre-recorded episode as he posted updates from Australia with his Instagram followers.
Nevertheless, the 52 year old presenter was back in charge once more in March as he paused to commend Alex for stepping in.
He remarked: “Before we go on with our usual nonsense, we should say how well Alex did last week. Well done, Alex Jones.”
Saturday Kitchen airs every Saturday at 10am on BBC One.
