Google Moves to End Geofence Warrants 

Google will soon allow users to store their location data on their devices rather than on Google’s servers, effectively ending a long-running surveillance practice that allowed police and law enforcement to tap Google’s vast banks of location data to identify potential criminals. Police can use geofence warrants to demand that Google turn over information on which users’ devices were in a particular geographic area at a certain point in time. Critics however say geofence warrants are unconstitutional and inherently overly broad, since these demands often also include the information of entirely innocent people who were nearby at a time when a crime was committed. Even the courts cannot agree on whether geofence warrants are legal, likely setting up an eventual challenge at the U.S. Supreme Court.