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by ascotan 32 days ago
The implications are far reaching beyond cell phones. any service that stores location data for it's user is subject to 4th amendment expectations _regardless_ of an opt-in. The court specifically rejected the argument that by opting-in the user is abrogating their privacy rights. If you centrally store location data you have an obligation to protect that data under the 4th amendment as private and would require a warrant.

The impacts here are with food delivery apps, fitness apps, weather apps, cloud services, ad tech agencies, data resellers/brokers, etc.

2 comments

The 4th amendment protects people from unreasonable searches by the government. It does not require businesses to do anything special. There are plenty of great reasons to, and even other legal requirements to, protect and limit information gathered by businesses about individuals, but the 4th isn’t one of them.
It's commonly forgotten that the bill of rights simply restricts the government. For nearly 100 years it didn't even apply to state governments but just the federal government.
More context for those not familiar with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_R...
Don't forget that beyond exposing your right to privacy from the government, this info is basically a sitting duck for bad actors outside of government, too. I wonder if these companies would be held accountable if the privacy stealing was from the other end. Probably not.