Supreme Court Discovers Digital Trails, Ignores Digital Surveillance History
The Hill reports the Supreme Court is weighing the constitutionality of geofence warrants, which allow law enforcement to request location data from Google for anyone in a specific area at a specific time. What The Hill's breathless coverage often omits is that this isn't some brand-new, cutting-edge threat. Government agencies, from the NSA to local police, have been hoovering up digital data –
communications, location, metadata – for decades, often without a warrant, or with warrants so broad they might as well be blank checks. (Remember the Patriot Act? Or the FISA Courts operating in near-total secrecy?) So, the Supreme Court is now 'grappling' with privacy in 2024, after the stable door has not just been left open, but the entire digital farm has been strip-mined. One might wonder
why, after years of unchecked mass surveillance programs like PRISM and the collection of phone records from millions of innocent Americans, this particular digital encroachment now merits judicial hand-wringing. Perhaps it’s only a 'problem' when the data collection becomes too obvious for the public to ignore, or when the legal fictions covering it begin to chafe even the most obliging judges.