In People v. Seymour, 21CR20001, defense challenges the constitutionality of a reverse keyword warrant served on Google for anyone who searched for a particular physical address over 15 days, and moves to suppress all resulting evidence. The Fourth Amendment Center’s Litigation Director, Michael Price, is co-counsel for the defense. 

 To identify suspects, law enforcement officers are turning increasingly to reverse search warrants, such as geofence warrants and keyword search warrants. These are searches used to find suspects and are not conducted to find evidence on a targeted individual. This trend presents novel challenges to the Fourth Amendment and privacy rights in the United States. 

Fuentes centers on the use of a geofence warrant, which searches all the location information of Google users with location history enabled for individuals who were near within a specified area during a period of time. The court granted the motion to suppress, ruling that the geofence constituted a general warrant and violated the Fourth Amendment. The court did not apply the good faith doctorine. 

Geofence warrants are a type of reverse warrant where the government seeks to know who was within a “geofence,” a defined physical area during a specific period of time. These are a type of “reverse warrant,” used to identify suspects when none are known without the data gathered by the warrant. The government utilizes geofence warrants to compel companies, such as Google, to produce information about devices interacting with their technology within a particular geographic region, which often includes many people who are wholly unconnected to the event being investigated. 

The motion requests the court to deny the defendant’s motion to suppress the evidence obtained through the geofence warrant. They argue the geofence warrant did not violate the Fourth Amendment and should not be suppressed because investigators acted in good faith. The motion requests the court to deny the defendant’s motion to suppress the evidence obtained through the geofence warrant.

This motion argues that the geofence warrant in Fuentes was constitutional and asserts that the warrant complied with the Fourth Amendment and that the evidence should not be suppressed because investigators acted in good faith and reasonably relied on the warrant. The motion requests the court to deny the defendant’s motion to suppress.

The defense argues that the geofence warrant in Fuentes was unconstitutional. They assert that it violated the Fourth Amendment and that the evidence should be suppressed due to intentional, reckless, and grossly negligent omissions and deceptions by law enforcement.

This decision granted the defendant's motion to suppress evidence obtained through a geofence warrant, ruling that the warrant lacked probable cause and was overly broad, constituting a general warrant. The court found that the search violated the Fourth Amendment as it did not adhere to the required three-step process to protect user anonymity. The court also rejected the government’s argument for a good faith exception, noting that the affidavit contained false information and lacked necessary details. The court suppressed all evidence from the geofence warrant. 

The defense’s post-hearing motion argues that the geofence warrant in Fuentes was unconstitutional, lacking probable cause and particularity, and was based on misleading information. The motion requests suppression of all evidence obtained through the warrant, asserting that it violated the Fourth Amendment and was executed in bad faith.

In the post-Dobbs landscape, states are criminalizing reproductive health in a variety of ways. Law enforcement will likely reach for digital surveillance tools in these cases and defenders will need to know how to counter that evidence. NACDL's Criminalization of Reproductive Health Taskforce and 4th Amendment Center researched categories of pregnancy criminalization, connected them to types of surveillance that law enforcement might use, and connected those to resources. Some tools show up several times on this page, which speaks to the omnipresence of these types of surveillance. 

Sample Motion to Suppress Keyword Search Warrant Template

Order granting the defendant's request for the Colorado Supreme Court to hear argument on a reverse keyword warrant after the district court's ruling.

The Colorado Supreme Court's ruling on the Rule 21 petition in the Seymour case. 

The attached motion to suppress from People v. Seymour challenges the constitutionality of a reverse keyword warrant served on Google for anyone who searched for a particular physical address over 15 days. If you have a reverse search case or additional questions, please contact the Fourth Amendment Center at 4ac@nacdl.org

Attached is the Superior Court's order permitting the suppression of evidence from a geofence warrant in People v. Dawes. The Fourth Amendment Center's litigation director was co-counsel for the defendant. If you have a geofence case or questions about geofence warrants, please reach out the Center at 4ac@nacdl.org.