The U.S. Supreme Court issued a 6‑3 ruling in a case involving a bank robbery in Virginia. Justice Elena Kagan authored the majority opinion, which held that geofence warrants require Fourth Amendment privacy protections and violate the amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches. According to bluesky, the Court placed limits on geofence warrants, requiring police to obtain them before accessing Google location data. Gdelt reported that the Court ruled in favor of privacy protections for cellphone users’ location history.

The majority opinion further stated, as reported by gdelt, that individuals do not forfeit expectations of privacy even when they opt into Google’s location‑history service. Justice Samuel Alito wrote a dissent, also cited by gdelt, arguing that the robber did not have an expectation of privacy with information he voluntarily turned over to Google.

The case centered on bank robber Okello Chatrie in a suburb of Richmond, Virginia, according to gdelt. Police obtained a geofence warrant in May 2019 to locate cellphones near the Call Federal Credit Union in Midlothian and determined that Chatrie was among the phones near the credit union. A subsequent search warrant at Chatrie’s home uncovered nearly $100,000, and he was sentenced to 12 years in prison, as reported by arstechnica.com.

Separately, bluesky reported that the Department of Homeland Security intends to expand the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency by hiring additional cybersecurity professionals.