Law enforcement has used geotagging IP addresses to locate the physical address of a suspect. Research a recent state or federal criminal case where geotagging has gone wrong for law enforcement. What are your thoughts on the case? What are the ethical issues concerning this type of identification? Do you agree or disagree with the use of geotagging?
Hello Class,
Before getting into the details of the case geotagging is the processes of appending geographic coordinates to media based on the location of a mobile device. A trial in California has held a geowarrant issues in the San Fransico area for the police department because they have violated the fourth amendment and California’s landmark electronic communications privacy laws. How this happened was that in 2018 a burglary happened in a residential area, and was only seen on privately owned security cameras and
the criminals were not caught so the police department turned to using a geofence warrant. A geofence warrant happens when the police department request data on every device in a certain area for a specific time frame whether the person gives rights or not.
-Nick
Reference
Lynch, J. (2022, October 11). First Court in California Suppresses Evidence from Overbroad Geofence
. Electronic Frontier Foundation. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/10/california-court-suppresses-evidence-overbroad-
geofence-warrant
