> That geofence warrants scoop up innocents’ data has now been proven beyond doubt.
While true, it's unclear how relevant this is. The equivalent police process of canvassing people determined to be likely bystanders also involves police interviewing and investigating people who turn out to be innocent.
Probably the relevant question is "Is there a fundamental difference between police identifying potential involved parties via eyewitness testimony and 'common sense' practices like looking for windows overseeing a crime scene and police fetching location identifiers from passive sensors?"
Under US law, you have no expectation to privacy for data that you give to a third party (in this case Google). I think you hit the nail on the head here, there's not much legal difference between Google and a nosy neighbor other than scale.
Search warrants are issued for specific suspects. This is equivalent to searching a crowd, which is a violation of your fourth amendment.
Naturally this hinges on whether or not your activity on google is yours or theirs. While their terms of service is clear, courts may have different opinions.
If I understand correctly, warrants are issued for a place to search and/or items to be seized. I don't think the criteria is actually naming a specific individual.
If it were, police would be prevented from executing warrants where evidence shows that stolen goods are being warehoused until they had an idea of who was doing the stealing, right?
> If I understand correctly, warrants are issued for a place to search and/or items to be seized. I don't think the criteria is actually naming a specific individual.
The property typically has an owner. This is the individual to which I was referring, though this is obviously a metaphorical application like you need to do applying the constitution to modern day.
While true, it's unclear how relevant this is. The equivalent police process of canvassing people determined to be likely bystanders also involves police interviewing and investigating people who turn out to be innocent.
Probably the relevant question is "Is there a fundamental difference between police identifying potential involved parties via eyewitness testimony and 'common sense' practices like looking for windows overseeing a crime scene and police fetching location identifiers from passive sensors?"