You can get dragged into a police investigation by proximity alone — for now
You can get dragged into a police investigation by proximity alone — for now
你可能会仅仅因为身处某地而被卷入警方调查——至少目前如此
A years-old bank heist may soon have major privacy implications for every American who owns a cellphone. On Monday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Chatrie v. United States, a case involving police’s use of controversial “geofence warrants” to find and arrest Okello Chatrie, the suspect of a 2019 bank robbery outside Richmond, Virginia. At stake is how private your location data — and any other information you store with a large tech company — actually is.
一起多年前的银行抢劫案，很快可能会对每一位拥有手机的美国人的隐私产生重大影响。周一，最高法院听取了“查特里诉美国案”（Chatrie v. United States）的辩论。该案涉及警方使用极具争议的“地理围栏搜查令”（geofence warrants）来锁定并逮捕 2019 年弗吉尼亚州里士满郊外一起银行抢劫案的嫌疑人奥凯洛·查特里（Okello Chatrie）。此案的核心在于，你的位置数据——以及你存储在大型科技公司的任何其他信息——究竟有多私密。
Chatrie was tracked down via the Location History feature on Google Maps, which can identify a person’s location within three meters and refreshes every two minutes. Police served Google with a warrant asking for data on anyone who had been within 300 meters of the Call Federal Credit Union at the time of the robbery, and made subsequent requests for users’ information until they identified Chatrie as the prime suspect.
查特里是通过谷歌地图的“位置记录”功能被追踪到的，该功能可以将人的位置精确到三米以内，并每两分钟刷新一次。警方曾向谷歌发出搜查令，要求获取案发时身处 Call Federal Credit Union 银行 300 米范围内的所有人的数据，并随后多次要求获取用户信息，直到最终将查特里锁定为主要嫌疑人。
Chatrie’s attorney argues that the geofence inquiry constituted an unreasonable search and seizure and therefore violated the Fourth Amendment. A federal district court agreed, determining that police didn’t have probable cause for a geofence warrant — but the court ultimately sided with the government, using the “good faith exception” to justify the legality of the otherwise unconstitutional search. A federal appeals court not only upheld the government’s position but also ruled that the Fourth Amendment hadn’t been violated at all, since Chatrie had voluntarily shared his location information with Google. Following today’s arguments, the Supreme Court will issue a ruling in the coming months.
查特里的律师辩称，这种地理围栏查询构成了不合理的搜查和扣押，因此违反了宪法第四修正案。联邦地方法院对此表示赞同，认定警方申请地理围栏搜查令缺乏“相当理由”（probable cause），但法院最终还是站在了政府一边，援引“善意例外”原则，将原本违宪的搜查判定为合法。联邦上诉法院不仅维持了政府的立场，还裁定由于查特里是自愿与谷歌共享其位置信息的，因此根本不存在违反第四修正案的情况。在今天的辩论结束后，最高法院将在未来几个月内作出裁决。
Google stopped storing Maps users’ location history in the cloud in 2024, citing privacy concerns — a change that led some justices to question why the court was taking up this issue in the first place. “This involves a Google feature that doesn’t exist any longer,” Justice Samuel Alito said during Monday’s oral arguments. “You’re asking for a law review article on a subject that is largely unexplored by our precedents.”
谷歌于 2024 年出于隐私考虑，停止在云端存储地图用户的历史位置信息。这一变化导致一些大法官质疑最高法院为何要受理此案。“这涉及到一个已经不存在的谷歌功能，”大法官塞缪尔·阿利托（Samuel Alito）在周一的口头辩论中表示，“你们是在要求我们就一个在先例中几乎未被探讨的主题撰写一篇法律评论文章。”
But plenty of other companies track users’ location data: Uber, Lyft, and Snap, to name a few, not to mention the scores of other apps that monitor and store information on users’ whereabouts. “Chatrie could have fairly major implications in other digital search cases, especially ‘reverse searches’ like this case where police do not have an identified suspect, account, or device,” Andrew Crocker, the surveillance litigation director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told The Verge. (The EFF filed an amicus brief in the case.)
但还有许多其他公司在追踪用户的位置数据：例如 Uber、Lyft 和 Snap，更不用说还有大量其他监控并存储用户行踪信息的应用程序。“查特里案可能会对其他数字搜查案件产生相当大的影响，尤其是像本案这种警方没有确定嫌疑人、账户或设备的‘反向搜查’，”电子前沿基金会（EFF）的监控诉讼主任安德鲁·克罗克（Andrew Crocker）告诉《The Verge》。（EFF 已就此案提交了一份法庭之友陈述书。）
Detectives sent Google a geofence warrant after hitting a dead end in their 2019 investigation of the robbery. Google first provided semi-anonymized information on 19 users, according to The New Republic. The detective investigating the case then sent a follow-up request for nine users’ data, providing no explanation on “why he chose the nine accounts,” and then asked Google to de-anonymize three of those accounts. This information led police to Chatrie.
在 2019 年的抢劫案调查陷入僵局后，侦探向谷歌发送了地理围栏搜查令。据《新共和》杂志报道，谷歌最初提供了 19 名用户的半匿名信息。负责调查此案的侦探随后发送了后续请求，要求获取其中 9 名用户的数据，但没有解释“为何选择这 9 个账户”，随后又要求谷歌对其中 3 个账户进行去匿名化处理。这些信息最终将警方引向了查特里。
Adam Unikowsky, Chatrie’s attorney, described these actions as “bad police work.” Some justices seemed skeptical. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, for example, said the police work in the Chatrie investigation “should be applauded.”
查特里的律师亚当·乌尼科夫斯基（Adam Unikowsky）将这些行为描述为“糟糕的警务工作”。一些大法官似乎持怀疑态度。例如，大法官布雷特·卡瓦诺（Brett Kavanaugh）表示，查特里调查案中的警务工作“应该受到赞扬”。
One of the questions at the heart of the case is whether accessing geofence information counts as a “search” at all. The court uses two methods to assess this, said Brent Skorup, a legal fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, which submitted an amicus brief in the case. The first involves property interests — whether a trespass was committed during a search of a house, for instance, or someone’s diary. The second involves whether basic privacy rights were violated, even in cases where no property is at stake.
此案的核心问题之一是，访问地理围栏信息是否算作“搜查”。自由意志主义智库卡托研究所（Cato Institute）的法律研究员布伦特·斯科普（Brent Skorup）表示，法院使用两种方法来评估这一点（该研究所已就此案提交了法庭之友陈述书）。第一种涉及财产利益——例如在搜查房屋或某人的日记时是否发生了非法侵入。第二种涉及是否侵犯了基本隐私权，即使在不涉及财产的情况下也是如此。
The core argument in Chatrie, Skorup explained, was that Chatrie owned his location history records and Google was holding them on his behalf in something akin to a virtual locker, just like a bank holds someone’s money. “We give our property to third parties all the time,” Skorup said. “If you mail a letter or put something in a safe deposit box, you still own the property even if you’re entrusting it to others.”
斯科普解释说，查特里案的核心论点是，查特里拥有自己的位置历史记录，而谷歌只是代他保管，就像银行代人保管钱财一样，这类似于一个虚拟储物柜。“我们一直都在把财产交给第三方，”斯科普说，“如果你寄出一封信或把东西放进保险箱，即使你委托他人保管，你仍然拥有该财产的所有权。”
On Monday, most justices seemed skeptical of the property argument. But Chatrie’s attorneys made another argument using what’s known as the Katz test. Under the precedent set by Katz v. United States, even if no property is involved, a search can occur if it violates a person’s expectation of privacy — including instances where police bugged a telephone booth, or obtained cellphone tower records, both without a warrant. The latter was the subject of Carpenter v. United States, a 2018 case in which the court ruled that police must generally get a warrant to seize cellphone tower location records.
周一，大多数大法官似乎对财产论点持怀疑态度。但查特里的律师使用了所谓的“卡茨测试”（Katz test）提出了另一个论点。根据“卡茨诉美国案”（Katz v. United States）确立的先例，即使不涉及财产，如果搜查侵犯了一个人的隐私期望，也可能构成搜查——包括警方在没有搜查令的情况下窃听电话亭或获取手机基站记录的情况。后者是 2018 年“卡彭特诉美国案”（Carpenter v. United States）的主题，在该案中，法院裁定警方在获取手机基站位置记录时通常必须获得搜查令。
Carpenter, the last major Fourth Amendment case taken up by the court, may serve as a precedent for Chatrie — but the composition of the court has changed significantly since 2018. The court was split in Carpenter, ultimately ruling 5-4 in favor of a warrant requirement. Two of the justices involved in that ruling have since left the bench: Anthony Kennedy retired in 2018, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in 2020. Their replacements, both appointed by President Donald Trump, tend to side with the government. But the court’s conservative composition isn’t a guarantee for the administration.
卡彭特案是最高法院受理的最后一个重大的第四修正案案件，它可能成为查特里案的先例——但自 2018 年以来，法院的组成发生了重大变化。在卡彭特案中，法院内部存在分歧，最终以 5 比 4 的投票结果支持必须获得搜查令。参与该裁决的两名大法官此后已离任：安东尼·肯尼迪（Anthony Kennedy）于 2018 年退休，露丝·巴德·金斯伯格（Ruth Bader Ginsburg）于 2020 年去世。他们的继任者均由唐纳德·特朗普总统任命，倾向于站在政府一边。但法院的保守派构成并不能保证政府一定会胜诉。