GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Geofence warrants are helping law enforcement agencies solve crimes using your cell phone's location data.
It's another useful tool in their investigative box, but 13 ON YOUR SIDE's Carla Bayron dug into why this cutting-edge method is so controversial.
If you have a cell phone with Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter or Google, your phone is constantly looking to save your location and share it with the company.
A law enforcement agency from the local, state or federal level may be interested in that data if they think it'll be helpful in solving a crime. That can be anything from misdemeanor drunk driving to murder. They can ask a judge to execute what's called a "Geofence Warrant."
Kent County Prosecutor's Office explains how Geofence warrants work
"It's a search warrant not for a particular person, but to Google or an Apple, saying this is a geographic region, say a city block, and a date and time and we'd like to know if you have any users that were in that location on that date and time and if so, provide that information," said Dan Helmer, the Assistant Prosecuting Attorney with the Kent County Prosecutor's Office.
A law enforcement agency can request a company not notify the person whose records are being accessed so as to not compromise their investigation.
Let's give a hypothetical situation, say, a string of strong-armed robberies. Police know it's the same suspect and method, but they don't know who that person is.
"You can do a geofence warrant to say, ok, if we know we had a robbery at this location on this date, and this location at this date, and this other location at this date, let's do a search warrant for those three locations at those three dates and times to see if there's any person that is in those three boxes on all three lists."
Why these warrants are controversial
They're controversial because peoples' records can be accessed who had nothing to do with a crime. This is why Helmer says investigators should write the warrants as narrowly as possible and only use them when necessary. They would also need to be backed up by other evidence.
"You can't have the biggest fishing net and say, I want the city of Grand Rapids for this week. Number one, you're going to overwhelm your investigators and number two, people have a reasonable expectation of privacy and you have no reason to request that wide of a scope."
As technology progresses, the more law enforcement can know about you.
"We give up so much privacy by downloading these apps and by having these free Facebooks and Snapchats and Twitters that we're essentially all carrying a tracking device in our pockets," Helmer said.
Helmer isn't aware of any geofence warrants executed in Kent County, but they could be in the near future.
"In the 2000s it was cell phone tower location information mapping where people were based on what towers their cell phone was using. It was new, you didn't see a lot of people using it. Now it's commonplace. I think this will be the same."
These warrants are rare, but as they become more prevalent, Helmer expects case law will develop to help prosecutors deal with them.
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