The Fourth Amendment now protects your phone location data. What does that mean?

The U.S. Supreme Court has voted 6-3 that smartphone location data requires privacy protection under the Fourth Amendment, Tom's Guide reports. The ruling will make it harder for law enforcement agencies to obtain geolocation data without serious backing, such as detailed description of the scope of search and probable cause.

The Fourth Amendment

The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects citizens from unreasonable government searches and seizures without a warrant or probable cause. It grants U.S. citizens a certain level of privacy in their persons, homes, papers, and effects and now extends to their geolocation data as well.

The second clause in the Fourth Amendment is the important one here. It dictates how law enforcement can obtain warrants to conduct searches and, in this case, obtain smartphone location data.

Under the Fourth Amendment, police now will need probable cause to request a warrant for your geolocation data or describe in detail what data is needed and for what reason.

Why now?

The ruling is actually tied to a court case from 2019, when Virginia police obtained location data from Android phones near the scene of a bank robbery. Google compiled and provided the location of 19 Android phones in the area of the robbery, and the police caught and prosecuted the perpetrators, resulting in a 12-year prison sentence for the main culprit.

However, lawyers argued that the police search was overly broad and violated his constitutional rights under the Fourth Amendment.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of this argument, effectively making phone geolocation data protected by the aforementioned Fourth Amendment.

What does it mean for you?

If you're not a criminal or you're not planning anything shady anytime soon, not much. Law enforcement can still request warrants for geolocation data, but it's now legally clear that this data is constitutionally protected and requires a different course of action.

In simple terms, police will need to be pretty specific when trying to obtain these warrants, describing the scope of the search, the details around the specific case, and sound reasoning why this data is needed.

All geolocation data falls under this ruling

Even though the reason for the ruling was a geofence warrant granted by Google, all tech companies need to comply. This includes Apple, Samsung, Garmin, Facebook, and practically every entity that collects and stores geolocation data.

On one hand, this makes it harder for the government to potentially abuse people's privacy without good reason, but it can also be a tool for lawyers in court to help criminals escape justice. What do you think about all this? Do you feel safer now that your geolocation data is protected by the Fourth Amendment?