A federal appeals court has ruled that geofence warrants are unconstitutional, a decision that will limit the use of the controversial search warrants across several U.S. states.The Friday ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which covers Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, found that geofence warrants are “categorically prohibited by the Fourth Amendment,” which protects against unwarranted searches and seizures. Civil liberties and privacy advocates applauded the ruling, which effectively makes the use of geofence warrants unlawful across the three U.S. states for now.Geofence warrants, also known as “reverse” search warrants, allow police to draw a shape on a map, such as over a crime scene, and demand that Google (or any other company that collects user locations) search its entire banks of location data for any phone or device that was in that area at a specific point in time. But critics have long argued that geofence warrants are unconstitutional because they can be overbroad and include information on entirely innocent people.
