Chatrie v. United States · ¶51

That approach makes all the more sense when, as with Location History, officials can select the time-limited set of materials they want from an all-encompassing database. Then, the durational bounds on the data actually acquired do little to address the Fourth Amendment’s concern about “a too permeating police surveillance.” Di Re, 332 U. S., at 595; see supra, at 12. What creates that concern is that the government can access all of a cell-phone user’s movements, in both public and private places—that it possesses a virtual panopticon with which to scrutinize its citizens’ activities. The sweep of the official invasion is not made less because the government, with the benefit of hindsight, can pinpoint exactly which few hours of movements it wants to review. That feature of accessing location data is, indeed, more a practical benefit to the government than a limit on its intrusive…

slip opinion
Source edition
Passage preview. Read in context for the complete text, notes and references.