Geofence Search Warrants & Tower Dumps: How Law Enforcement Gets Them, Trial Techniques For Fighting Them

January 6, 2021 crashed into the Fourth Amendment's right to privacy as investigators used the events of that day to get a geofence search warrant identifying 1,498 people who overran the Capitol building. This massive geofence warrant tested the restrictions of the Fourth Amendment on the ability of law enforcement to force Google to reveal a person's location at a specific time and place.

The first geofence search warrant was issued in 2016. By 2021, Google was responding to 11,000 geofenc...