What Are Geofencing Warrants And How They Are A Threat To Privacy

Geofencing Warrants have gained traction, but they are a threat to privacy, and there is no guarantee that authorities will interpret them correctly.

The work of the House committee looking into the events of January 6, 2021 is almost complete, and this week a jury found a key participant in the Capitol attack guilty of seditious conspiracy. Nearly 900 further criminal cases involving alleged rioters are still pending, and one of them has revealed unsettling new information about how the FBI looked into these defendants.

According to Wired and Emptywheel, David Rhine is the suspect, and what distinguishes his case from others is that his attorney is the first to potentially succeed in challenging the geofencing warrant that the FBI used to locate some of the defendants inside the Capitol building during the attack.

The warrant, which ordered Google to give the FBI information on devices using its location services inside a specific geographic area—in this case, at or very...