Document Type

Blog Post

Publication Date

4-29-2021

Abstract

Imagine a world where a king could compel the search of anybody, anywhere, and for anything. This world inspired James Madison to draft the Fourth Amendment, and is also a world we are returning to. The Fourth Amendment was created to protect against indiscriminate general warrants used in Georgian England, which subjected colonists to unrestricted invasions of privacy. Today, these general warrants come with a new name and in a new form: geofence warrants. Geofence warrants permit law enforcement to obtain the location data of every person that was in a specific geographic area where a crime occurred, in an effort to work backwards and identify the culprit. Essentially, the days have returned in which all the King’s horses and all the King’s men can burst into every apartment in a building to find their suspect.

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