Sept. 14, 2021 | by Andrea Vittorio | Bloomberg Law |
Privacy advocates and criminal defense lawyers are looking to a robbery case in a Virginia federal court as a high-profile legal test for law enforcement’s growing use of location data from Alphabet Inc.’s Google to identify suspects.
The robbery case, which is expected to result in a ruling soon, is considered the first federal example of a criminal defendant challenging the use of a such data as evidence in his indictment. Other courts have weighed in on whether law enforcement should gain access to Google’s location data for their investigations, but few of those opinions are made public or easy to find, because warrant requests and responses are often kept sealed.
The ruling looms as a recently released Google report shows state and local law enforcement are increasingly turning to the tech giant’s trove of user location data in a bid to find suspects for robberies or other crimes. These so-called geofence warrants are based on a virtual perimeter surrounding a geographic area of interest.
Geofence warrants raise questions for privacy protections under the Fourth Amendment and whether law enforcement should use Google’s data in investigations.
“This technology was designed to sell ads, not solve bank robberies,” said Michael Price, litigation director for the Fourth Amendment Center at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
Price is defending Okello Chatrie, a man accused of robbing a bank in Richmond, Va., in the case before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Law enforcement found Chatrie with the help of location data from Google. Chatrie has pleaded not guilty.
Price expects District Judge M. Hannah Lauck to issue a decision in the case soon, following an oral argument in June. Lawyers from the Justice Department who represent law enforcement in the case didn’t respond to requests for comment.
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