We don't get a lot of privacy wins. Ya know? I'll take whatever we can get.
I linked the wiki page for this court case. As of me typing now, page hasn't been updated with the court decision. Prob will be soon. If you want the rawdog court document, it's here.
TLDR. SCOTUS just decided that geofence warrants require 4th amendment protection. For the non-USA peeps, 4A is protection against gov searches without a warrant granted with probable cause. The court decided that since everyone now carries a smartphone everywhere, and loc data is highly personal, police geofence requests require a judicial warrant. In the same way one is required for the police to search your home.
Before anybody goes off about how "this doesn't matter"... This does not restrict commercial data collection. Even so, it does matter. It is a step in a good direction, and will have real world impacts. It might even change the landscape around Flocks. Another positive step happened a while ago, in Carpenter vs the United States, about historical cell site location data.
The issue is with dragnet searches. Obtaining a search warrant for a very specific individual or group with sufficient cause the search warrant can be granted.
What is going on now is not specific individual or group with sufficient cause approved search warrants.
It's a dragnet or data collection without a search warrant (which is ungrantable/defendable). Anything connected with these dragnet searches cannot be used in court. If it's found out that any part of a case is based on a warrantless dragnet collection data, the case gets thrown out and there is ample cause to file civil suit against this abuse of 4A rights. Slam dunk bullet proof case.