Supreme Court Hears Arguments on Use of Geofence Warrants

During two hours of oral arguments that scrambled the court’s usual ideological alliances, the U.S. Supreme Court justices debated how the Constitution’s traditional protections apply to the rapidly changing technology that has made it easier for the police to scoop up vast amounts of data to assemble a detailed look at a person’s movements and activities. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, a conservative, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a liberal, lobbed the toughest questions at the Justice Department’s lawyer, expressing a deep concern that the government’s position on accessing location data would apply similarly to other forms of electronic data, including emails, photos and documents.