Dean William McGeveran Interviewed by CNN and USA Today About Supreme Court Arguments Regarding Geofence Warrants

Dean William McGeveran, William S. Pattee Professor of Law, was interviewed by CNN and USA Today about the U.S. Supreme Court hearing arguments about whether so-called geofence warrants, which are directed at tech companies in gathering Google location data from millions of phones rather than individual suspects, are consistent with the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches. The dispute stemmed from the conviction of a bank robber whose case relied on such a warrant. Dean McGeveran said the court’s decision making it easier for law enforcement to solve crimes, but also exposing troves of personal information to authorities, demonstrates the ramifications of the case. He said, “It’s huge. The issues involved apply to any of the digital technology that is tracking your location, which is a lot of things. It definitely has the capacity to be an extremely important landmark decision, depending on how they write it and decide it,”