Regulating commercial location tracking has reached a turning point. Last year, we published
our rubric
for what comprehensive and protective location privacy laws should look like, outlining the baseline standards states should meet to shield individuals from pervasive location surveillance. Since then, state lawmakers across the country have begun responding to calls like these, with
Connecticut
,
Maryland
,
New Jersey
,
Oregon
,
and
Virginia
enacting new consumer privacy restraints on an industry that profits off our physical movements.
Yet, even as these states move the ball forward to restrict location tracking, most of their laws leave significant gaps that still must be filled. Other states – and Congress – need to get into the game, too, and ensure protection of everyone.
Why Location Privacy Is Important
Imagine spending a couple of hours in a coffee shop, a friend's house, or a healthcare clinic, only to discover yourself under police investigation because your cell phone’s location data exposed your presence there.
This is the reality of
geofence warrants
for
location data
, the controversial surveillance technique recently scrutinized by the U.S. Supreme Court in
Chatrie v. United States
. Through geofencing, tech companies and law enforcement can map everyone who was present within a specific area over a certain window of time, inverting standard constitutional protections by turning every innocent bystander into a potential suspect. While the Supreme Court's ruling in
Chatrie
established that accessing location data via geofencing constitutes a Fourth Amendment search requiring constitutional protections, law enforcement demands via these warrants are only part of the problem. That same geolocation tracking is used by
commercial data brokers
operating in a largely
unregulated market
. These brokers regularly harvest, aggregate, and sell physical location data to
anyone with a credit card
(including government agencies, which
… [more]
