Orin S. Kerr | 7.10.2024 7:14 PM

Regular readers may recall my prior coverage of United States v. Chatrie, a case on the Fourth Amendment implications of collecting Google location history records—location records stored by Google about where logged-in Google users are located—which in the Chatrie case were used to identify a bank robber. The Fourth Circuit handed down its ruling in the case yesterday, and I thought I would give a quick summary and offer some thoughts.

My 2022 post explained the technology, the facts, and the trial court's ruling, so please go there for the details, as I'd rather not repeat it all here. (Go ahead, really, I'll wait. Okay, back? Now let's continue.). As you'll recall from my 2022 post—which you just read, right?— the trial court in this case (1) assumed that collecting the records was a Fourth Amendment search; (2) adopted a very narrow view of how broadly warrants for such records can extend, under which the Chatrie geofence warrant was plainly unconstitutional; and then (3) upheld the collection of records anyway under the good-faith exception to the warrant requirement because it was such a novel issue. My 2022 post was skeptical of this, suggesting that no search may have occurred in the first place and that warrants should be a lot broader than what the district court concluded.

In the new ruling, the Fourth Circuit rules 2-1 that no search occurred. Judge Jay Richardson wrote the majority opinion, and he was joined by Judge Harvie Wilkinson, Judge James Wynn dissented. Here's the key reasoning from the majority opinion by Judge Richardson:

Relying on Carpenter, Chatrie argues that the government conducted a search when it obtained his Location History data from Google. We disagree. Carpenter identified two rationales that justify applying the third-party doctrine: the limited degree to which the information sought implicates privacy concerns and the voluntary exposure of that information to third parties. Both rationales apply here. Accordingly, we find that Chatrie did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the two hours' worth of Location History data that law enforcement obtained from Google. So the government did not conduct a search by obtaining it.

Start with the nature of the information sought. Carpenter, 585 U.S. at 314, 138 S.Ct. 2206. The government requested and obtained only two hours' worth of Chatrie's Location History data.16 By no means was this an "all-encompassing record of [Chatrie's] whereabouts … provid[ing] an intimate window into [his] person[al] life." Carpenter, 585 U.S. at 311, 138 S.Ct. 2206. All the government had was an "individual trip viewed in isolation," which, standing alone, was not enough to "enable[ ] deductions about 'what [Chatrie] does repeatedly, what he does not do, and what he does ensemble.' "Beautiful Struggle, 2 F.4th at 342 (quoting Maynard, 615 F.3d at 562–63). The information obtained was therefore far less revealing than that obtained in Jones, Carpenter, or Beautiful Struggle and more like the short-term public movements in Knotts, which the Court found were "voluntarily conveyed to anyone who wanted to look." Carpenter, 585 U.S. at 314, 138 S.Ct. 2206 (quoting Knotts, 460 U.S. at 281, 103 S.Ct. 1081). A record of a person's single, brief trip is no more revealing than his bank records or telephone call logs. See Miller, 425 U.S. at 442, 96 S.Ct. 1619; Smith, 442 U.S. at 742, 99 S.Ct. 2577. Chatrie thus did not have a "legitimate 'expectation of privacy,' " in the information obtained by the government, so the first rationale for the third-party doctrine applies here. Carpenter, 585 U.S. at 314, 138 S.Ct. 2206 (quoting Miller, 425 U.S. at 442, 96 S.Ct. 1619).

Furthermore, Chatrie voluntarily exposed his location information to Google by opting in to Location History. Id. at 315, 138 S.Ct. 2206. Consider again how Location History works. Location History is an optional setting that adds extra features, like traffic updates and targeted advertisements, to a user's experience. But it is "off by default" and must be affirmatively activated by a user before Google begins tracking and storing his location data. J.A. 1333–34. Of course, once Google secures this consent, it monitors his location at all times and across all devices. Yet even then, Google still affords the user ultimate control over how his data is used: If he changes his mind, he can review, edit, or delete the collected information and stop Google from collecting more. Whether Google tracks a user's location, therefore, is entirely up to the user himself. If Google compiles a record of his whereabouts, it is only because he has authorized Google to do so.

Nor is a user's consent secured in ignorance, either. See Carpenter, 585 U.S. at 314, 138 S.Ct. 2206 (explaining that the third-party doctrine applies to information "knowingly shared with another"). To the contrary, the record shows that Google provides users with ample notice about the nature of this setting. Before Google allows a user to enable Location History, it first........

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