Posted on 04/30/2026 4:45:07 AM PDT by MtnClimber
“Big Brother is watching you” is no longer a fictional admonition. Everywhere you go, your location is recorded by phone technology, license plate readers, Uber and Lyft transactions, and cameras.
Privacy? Forget about it. Your location history is in the hands of many tech companies. Can the police and other government agencies force tech companies to share that information about you? The U.S. Supreme Court took up that question on Monday. The court’s decision could have a widespread impact on your privacy.
If your location history puts you within a 1-mile radius of a bank robbery with hundreds of other people, you could become a suspect, swept up in the wide net cast to find the perpetrator.
Many people find the growing surveillance creepy, but law enforcement is using this technology – called geofencing – to solve crimes rapidly, including some that would go unsolved.
During Monday’s oral arguments in Chatrie v. United States, the justices tackled this tradeoff between privacy and effective crimefighting, and how the U.S. Constitution, written over two centuries ago, can be interpreted to safeguard your rights in the age of Big Brother.
In 2019, a gunman robbed the Call Federal Credit Union in Midlothian, Virginia. Stumped, the police secured a “geofence warrant” instructing Google to produce location history records for every digital device within a 17.5-acre circle around the crime scene for a two-hour timeframe. Then the police asked Google for the identity of three device users, including the man ultimately charged with the crime, Okello Chatrie.
Chatrie claims his Fourth Amendment right to be protected from “unreasonable” government search was violated when police used geofencing and compelled Google to disclose his location history.
The case is making for strange bedfellows, bringing together the often left-leaning American Civil Liberties Union and
(Excerpt) Read more at amac.us ...
And if you were interesting enough that someone with clout wanted to follow your movements, they could.
By the way, I love the woods, hunt from a tent in the winter, eat lots of deer, but after several days of outdoor living, it's real nice to get a hot shower, and a bedroom that has controlled heat.
If some one is watching...why?
FedEx has a partnership with Flock Safety to share surveillance camera feeds, including license plate readers. These can be accessed by law enforcement with Flock contracts.
I am not afraid of my license plate locations being available to law enforcement because they have no reason to look for me. But how does it expand in the future. There is plenty there for leftists to abuse.
Back under Obama when we had the disagreement with the govt over a patent sale I always wrapped my phone in tin foil so I wouldn’t be followed around. They track you through the GPS in your phone.
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Didn't your head get cold?
Faraday bags for your phone and anti-camera coatings for your license plates make a difference.
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Geofence tracking cannot work on a phone that is completely turned off. Geofencing relies on a device’s ability to use GPS, Wi-Fi, or cellular signals to determine its location and communicate with a server. When a phone is powered off, these systems are inactive and cannot detect or report location data.
In the context of law enforcement geofence warrants (like those used for January 6 investigations), data is collected from devices that were actively powered on and had location services enabled during the specified time and location window. A powered-off phone would not appear in this data.
~Leo AI, in the Brave browser
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