Geofence surveillance technology uses cell phone location data to identify people who are in a particular area at any given time. For instance, law enforcement officials have relied on geofence warrants to carry out dragnet sweeps of individuals near a crime scene. The FBI used geofence warrants to identify individuals who were in the vicinity of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
This same technology was reportedly used by government officials in Santa Clara County, Calif., to monitor the concentrations of congregants at Calvary Chapel during the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 and 2021 and levy nearly $3 million in public health fines against the church for violating the county’s strict pandemic restrictions. The county issued a shelter-in-place order in March 2020, dictating whom residents could see, where they could go, what they could do, and under what circumstances. County officials imposed even harsher restrictions on churches, accompanied by the threat of crippling fines for those that did not comply with the lockdown orders.
Despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that similar restrictions unconstitutionally “single[d] out houses of worship for especially harsh treatment” and “str[uck] at the very heart of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty,” county officials have sought to collect millions of dollars in fines levied against churches, including Calvary Chapel, for violating the county’s mandates.
The use of geofence warrants is highly controversial and is being increasingly debated in the legislatures and challenged in the courts. In January 2023, a federal district judge for the District of Columbia upheld the use of geofence warrants by police in connection with the events of Jan. 6 at the nation’s Capitol. However, civil liberties advocates warn that geofencing constitutes an unprecedented level of mass surveillance that is clearly at odds with the Fourth Amendment’s prohibitions on unreasonable searches and seizures by government agents, especially coupled with a particularized lack of probable cause.
The Institute's letter to Santa Clara County is available at www.rutherford.org.
The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties organization, provides legal assistance at no charge to individuals whose constitutional rights have been threatened or violated and educates the public on a wide spectrum of issues affecting their freedoms.
Source: https://bit.ly/3YKMbXq
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