[00:00] Introduction: Welcome to Registry Matters, an independent production. Our opinions are our own, and we’re grateful for your support. You make what we do here possible. Together, we’re making a difference. And always remember, FYP.
[00:30] Andy: Scorching heat, man, I’ll tell you what. This is episode 380 of Registry Matters. Good evening, Larry. Are you cooking your eggs on the sidewalk these days?
[00:40] Larry: Actually, it’s not that bad. It only hit 93 here today.
[00:43] Andy: I think it was warmer here today. Yeah, I totally think it was warmer here today. We were up in the mid-90s, excuse me, not May 90s.
[01:00] Larry: I didn’t think about that.
[01:00] Andy: Yeah, my boss from work sent a picture. While the United States is facing record heat waves, they show some dude driving down the road with like a foot of snow beside him. And somewhere in Wyoming, it’s got to be crazy.
[01:15] Larry: So, I’ll head that way.
[01:18] Andy: Yeah, well, be sure to go. I’m sorry, I interrupted you.
[01:20] Andy: If you need to cool off, man. If you need to get some ice for your icebox, right?
[01:25] Larry: I do.
[01:26] Andy: Remember to show your support by hitting the like and subscribe button, or give us a five-star rating in your favorite podcast app, or all of the podcast apps if you really feel like it. It makes a difference and helps people find the podcasts that haven’t found us yet. I mean, there’s only about a million people impacted by the registry, right? We should have bigger numbers. Don’t you think, Larry?
[01:45] Larry: Been saying that for some time, but apparently I’m doing something wrong because it’s not growing at the rate it should. So, maybe a new person needs to be sitting behind the microphone.
[01:57] Andy: Oh, I see what you did there. All right. Well, then, ultimately, if you feel super generous, you could help contribute to Patreon at patreon.com/registrymatters. And without further ado, on this fine Wednesday evening, what are we doing tonight?
[02:13] Larry: We have a case from the United States Supreme Court, and it’s a nice victory for those who will benefit from it, but not too much for the PFR community. It won’t do us too much good yet. I don’t think it actually will, but maybe you can help understand how it might tie in. And also, we have a couple of questions from our vast listing audience that we’re going to get into.
[02:38] Andy: Didn’t we just talk about how our audience isn’t that vast?
[02:42] Larry: Well, let’s just pretend it’s really vast. Are you snowing us? It’s vast for this purpose. So, we’ve got one question from Florida and another one from Louisiana. How’s that?
[02:54] Andy: Fantastic. Oh, two of the best states to live in as a PFR. All right. So, this one. The state of Florida is implementing new laws that make it a crime for PFRs to approach minors in public parks. Cannot speak to them. I often go fishing on a public dock. Although minors do not congregate here, occasionally they are present. Do I have to leave? If the minor asks me, “Have you caught anything?” will responding cause possible arrest? And wouldn’t this be a violation of free speech? Seems like this is going too far. I’m not seeking out minors to talk to. I’m just trying to fish. I’ve had four strokes and a triple bypass. My access is very limited. I’m beginning to fear public places because minors are everywhere I go. They’re in grocery stores, shopping malls, fishing docks. Where does it stop? Will I be tattooed with a big fat red S.O. on my forehead or have a chip put under my skin? It’s been 35 years since re-offending. Completed my probation in 2008. But I am still trying to fish. I am still treated as if I was a monster. Not allowed to speak to a child? I understand if I speak in a suggestive or sexual way that should be illegal. But to put a blanket ban on speaking? Is that fair? Am I being overly concerned? Or is this the real fear of being in public now?
[04:17] Larry: Well, I put that in there because I thought I could have a little bit of fun with it. You know how I like to pick on the Bible Belt, so I just couldn’t help myself.
[04:25] Andy: This guy sounds like one of your contemporaries. He’s had four heart attacks and a triple bypass. Not necessarily as old as you, though. But very few people reach 190 years old. That’s true.
[04:33] Larry: You can have heart trouble long before reaching my age. Very few people make it to 190. This raises many questions buried in there. The truth is, no one knows the answers. I haven’t done any research. So I don’t know if this law has been passed or what stage it’s at. But he says they’re implementing new laws. That implies it’s already passed. We’re taking it at face value with no research because our staff hasn’t been paid recently. They were busy at the conference. There are deep constitutional challenges here, as he can see. This law would be so vague that no fair enforcement could know what constitutes a violation. Can’t speak to them? Really? Couldn’t direct someone drowning how to grab a rescue line?
[05:52] Andy: Well, I got to tell you, when I was in treatment, they put that out as a scenario. That you are walking home from work and there’s a cut through a wooded area where you’re pretty much by yourself on either side. And you come across a child in need. What should you do? And the answer was, turn around and go back. Really? I was like, come on, man. You can’t do that. You have some kind of societal duty to help somebody that’s in need.
[06:27] Larry: I agree. Now, that’s going to cause me to go off the script because it reminds me of a case we had 20 years ago or so where the person had violated probation by going on school campus. He went there because he got word that his kid was getting harassed and beat up at a middle school due to his status on the registry. And he decided to go on campus to protect his son. Well, I decided that was a probation violation. But then I told him, if you’ve got the chutzpah, tell the judge everything in your complaint is true. You did actually go on school campus because you were protecting your son. If the school can’t protect my son, I’ll do exactly the same thing again. We let the state know that was going to be our defense. They decided to fold their tent because he wasn’t willing to admit guilt. Now, I want to elect a judge who would say, “I ain’t gonna let you protect your son.” And dare them to lock me up for it. The state didn’t want to put themselves in that position and dropped the case since there was nothing else they could charge him with other than protecting his kid.
[08:59] Andy: Going into Toys R Us, I can understand why you might think it’s off-limits. But you could still go there without harassing children. So I can accept that to some extent. Fair?
[09:15] Larry: Not completely in agreement with you. Because if you’re a PFR, you might need toys for your kid.
[09:20] Andy: That’s correct. But you could at least see that the intent of the store is toys for children. As opposed to just going to Kroger or Schweigmans. Sure.
[09:32] Larry: I can see that. But now this is the state that believes… This is the irony that the people who live in these states don’t ever seem to connect the dots. This is the state, and the South is primarily the Bible Belt. These are the people who believe in forgiveness because that’s what the Bible teaches. Right? I thought so. Well, they throw the Bible out the window when it comes to this, and they forget all about what they profess they believe. And then this is the state that believes in individual liberty. But yet they’re telling you that you can’t speak. Now, there’s a certain irony in this.
[10:10] Andy: There is.
[10:11] Larry: And I wish that this person who sent this would call his lawmakers out on that rather than giving them a pass. Larry at FYP doesn’t give his team a pass. But apparently people on the other team do. If you’re a hypocrite, you’re going to get called out even if you’re on my team. I’m doing it right now with my state representative who’s justifying the failures of this mayor that we’ve had for the last nine years and pretending it would be the same way if we had another mayor. And I said, you know, the funny thing is I never heard you give that forgiveness and pass when we had Mayor Richard Berry who was from the Republican Party. Magically now you say there’s nothing the mayor can do. But you didn’t say that about Mayor Berry. What changed?
[10:59] Andy: I’m with you. Come off of that high horse. We can move over to another fine state down there, Louisiana. This one says, Hey guys, former patron here. Likely patron again soon. I went by [name redacted], most recently on Discord. I wanted to share a couple of recent registry slash probation misadventures that felt very much like Registry Matters material. I recently changed addresses and had to pay for a new round of newspaper ads and notification mailers. $50 a day for two days for the newspaper, plus roughly another $100 for the mailers. The extra fun was that the mailers came back with my address listed as an address that does not exist. My correct address is 806 Highway 112. The mailers incorrectly, incorrectly, incorrectly listed it as 806 Highway NCK. I can’t even imagine what NCK would mean. Do you have any idea?
[12:01] Larry: No idea.
[12:02] Andy: Okay. Well, I happened to stop by the registry office right before the mailers went out and the guy who runs the parish registry showed me the mailer where NCK had been crossed out and 112 written in by hand. He said he had personally entered the correct information and that the registry itself had the correct information. The company handling the mailers couldn’t explain what happened. So I’m torn. On one hand, I’m furious that I had to pay money to this Mickey Mouse operation whose job is to get it right and they didn’t. Part of me wants to raise a fuss and make them send the corrected mailers at their own expense. On the other hand, I’m not exactly eager to draw attention to myself or remind people in my area that I exist. Now, do you think he has a point? If he has to pay, shouldn’t the mailers he paid for be correct?
[12:54] Larry: Well, I did get a chuckle reading that section of this. It gets funnier as we go, but these are so important because the community would die without these. But yeah, they’re incorrect and he has to pay for something that is incorrect. Now, what would be funny, you will admit this is funny, if they prosecuted him for sending out the mailers with incorrect information? Yes.
[13:20] Andy: Yes, that would, sadly, be funny. All right, so I’ll keep reading. Still, if these mailers serve such an important public safety function, it seems like mistakes like this would have to be corrected. The fact that no corrected mailers have arrived raises the question of why I had to pay for this supposedly essential function if the private vendor carrying it out is not held to any meaningful standard of accuracy. It is almost as if this is more about public shaming and punishment. No, say that isn’t so.
[14:05] Andy: After the fact, I’m protecting anyone from dangerous individuals. And to be fair, I do appreciate that this mailer did not make the strictly false claim that I harmed a child like the one did last time I moved. The reason I recently moved is its own story. I spent 179 days locked up starting on Halloween night. The jurisdiction supervising my probation decided that instead of sending deputies to the homes of registrants on probation, they would have everyone report to me. They would report to the probation office from 4 to 8 p.m. Clearly the time period each year when we are at our most powerful. While we were there, they drug tested everyone and searched everyone’s phone. During the search of my phone, they claimed to have found evidence of four counts of unlawful use of social networking websites. I was arrested.
[14:48] Larry: It’s very murky, but in my opinion, it may not have… especially if any of those registrants that were required to be there were no longer in any form of supervision. In this case, as you pointed out, he was still under supervision at that time. Okay. And this is a Halloween safety protocol of gathering everyone up. But see, I’m not sure if it was just solely restricted to supervised individuals. So this safety protocol of gathering up everyone at location does not jettison their privacy rights. So what you have to do is, you would have to do what he would need to do is he should have asked his attorney in Louisiana if merely being told to show up for a safety protocol constitutes enough to search devices. Because when you’re under supervision, you have a limited expectation of privacy, but you have, in many states, there has to be an articulatable reason for doing it. You know, some level, low threshold, like officer stop, they can stop you almost for anything. But they have to be able to articulate why they stopped you. The taillight was out. You swerved over the center line. Anything to justify. They just can’t go around willy-nilly pulling people over. So he might have had a right to expect a little bit of articulatable probable cause to search the phones. So if I’m right, I would have considered filing a motion to suppress everything they found if that was in existence as a right in Louisiana. Now, you know, that a state that protects individual liberty would have as many rights or more than others, correct? You would think that they would actually, like, have
[16:29] Andy: extra rights. Oh, yes, of course. It would be like two right turns, because if you have rights, then you would have double rights, therefore two right turns.
[16:37] Larry: Yes, because they’re all about individual liberty.
[16:39] Andy: in the South. Of course. Yeah, I mean, of course, of course. I don’t even know why we would even be bringing this up, questioning that. All right, so then continuing on, in January, my public defender successfully filed a motion to remove the right to search and remove my bond obligations, but that did not help because I had a probation hold. Nothing happened until early February when deputies from Caddo Parish, the jurisdiction where I was convicted, transported me to Shreveport for a probation revocation hearing. That hearing was so bizarre. My PO was not there. The DA seemed confused about what was happening. I had not been assigned a public defender in that jurisdiction. They asked if I wanted to revoke myself, which I didn’t do. Which I declined. So they reset it. My support network was scared enough to scrape together money for a lawyer who could represent me in both the Rapides criminal case and the Caddo revocation. In both the Rapides criminal case and the Caddo revocation. Eventually, the Rapides charges were dropped. My phone had been sent off for analysis, but nothing happened. Nothing had come back. And the DA apparently was not interested in using parish resources to prosecute a procedural violation like that.
[17:59] Larry: How do you think that went over with the PO? Well, I can tell you, they didn’t see it with the same humor I do. But he did, you gotta give him kudos for not agreeing when they didn’t have an attorney for him and he’s in custody and they say, oh, well, you have a right to an attorney, but if you just want to go ahead and admit, we’ll take care of this. Give the man kudos. He’s lived long enough to know that he didn’t want to do that. But he said the PO was furious that the charges were dropped and made a number of claims about what was supposedly found on his phone. And then by the time of my actual hearing, finally approached, my lawyer told me there was no evidence for any of those claims. Now, imagine that. Right. The phone was still off in analysis limbo and apparently nobody gathered anything else. So on day 179 of his confinement, everybody suddenly agreed to terminate his probation unsatisfactorily. And then he says, that sounds worse than it functionally was. It meant I was off probation immediately and did not owe the back probation fees from the six months I was locked up. Now that’s funny. That would have been funny if you had to pay that. You’re locked up, but you still owe the six months? Yeah, you’d agree that would be funny. He says, the only real consequence is that I’m no longer eligible for probation in Louisiana on future charges, which I hope never matters, because I’m a general rule follower. And I think I’ve preached this before. Unsatisfactory discharge for probation sounds good because you’re into that nightmare. But if you ever get in trouble again, it makes it very unlikely. And apparently in Louisiana, you’re ineligible. In New Mexico, you’re still eligible, but they frown on granting you. Even if you’ve had an unsatisfactory discharge. So the whole thing kind of sucks all the way around.
[19:59] Andy: He mentioned that there’s a lot more to the experience, including medication issues, parish jail nonsense, being transported back and forth between parishes, and the financial mess of trying to rebuild after six months of being locked up. But I’ll spare you the full novel, unless you’re interested. The short version is, I paid for registry mailers that listed non-existent addresses. Nobody seems especially concerned that they were wrong. And I spent 190 days locked up over charges that were eventually dropped and a revocation that ultimately did not happen. Do you think he has any recourse on anything related to A, B, or C, or if there was a D in there too?
[20:39] Larry: I really don’t think he does. I would imagine that, particularly in the Bible Belt, they’ve overly protected law enforcement with all sorts of layers of immunity. I’d be shocked. I’d be shocked if he has any recourse legally, but if he thinks he does or knows something I don’t know, he might talk to a legal professional, but I think it’s an extreme long shot.
[21:04] Andy: How much did you edit this before putting it in here?
[21:07] Larry: Oh, quite a bit. Did I goof it up somewhere?
[21:10] Andy: No, no, no, no. It’s a funny story. That’s why it’s written in a way that it’s funny to read. So yeah, I tried to make it so we could tell
[21:18] Larry: the story because it was too long to read by itself.
[21:20] Andy: I see. Is that the one that I forwarded you from the conference? At some point it was forwarded. I don’t remember when, but yeah. Okay. Because I remember forwarding you something. I saw scroll, scroll, scroll. So I just forwarded it.
[21:33] Announcer: Are you a first time listener of Registry Matters? Well, then make us a part of your daily routine and subscribe today. Just search for Registry Matters through your favorite podcast app. Hit the subscribe button and you’re off to the races. You can now enjoy hours of sarcasm and snark from Andy and Larry on a weekly basis. Oh, and there’s some excellent information thrown in there too. Subscribing also encourages others to get on the bandwagon and become regular Registry Matters listeners. So what are you waiting for? Subscribe to Registry Matters right now. Help us keep fighting and continue to say F-Y.
[22:23] Andy: Okay, the main event. So this is Chatri. This is how we’re agreeing to say it’s Chatri. So that’s C-H-A-T-R-I-E versus the United States. This week, we’ve got the Supreme Court decision that is entirely right up the registry people’s alley, isn’t it?
[22:43] Larry: Well, I don’t think it’s entirely up their alley. It’s not a winner or a loser. It’s not a loss for us. But honestly, the main center of the case is an armed bank robber, not a registrant. So don’t get too excited. But it’s a fascinating case. And there are some transferable lessons, I think, buried in here. And we’re going to read and discuss the decision the way we normally do. And then I’ll tell you what travels to us and what doesn’t. And we’ve got to appreciate and thank technology for helping, because this would never have come together tonight. We just didn’t have the time to pull it together.
[23:18] Andy: Well, do me a favor. Can you set the table on this? What actually happened?
[23:24] Larry: Pretty mundane. The court opened the case by telling us that they said on May 20, 2019, a man robbed a credit union in Midlothian, Virginia. The police learned from witnesses and surveillance footage that, quote, the robber had approached the credit union from a corner of an adjacent church while appearing to talk on a cell phone. But they could not find out anything more. And the robber remained at large. So that’s where the investigation started.
[24:01] Andy: Okay, all right. I’ll bite. So with nothing, what do they reach for then?
[24:08] Larry: Well, something with a name that’s in your department, not mine. They went to the Virginia magistrate. And I applied for what’s called the geofence warrant directed at Google and explained it because I half understand it, if that much.
[24:29] Andy: It’s a digital dragnet. The court explains it plainly. Suppose investigators know a crime was committed at a particular place in time but do not have a suspect. They may draw a geofence, which is just drawing a box around the area on a map. So it’s a virtual line around something and around the crime scene. And they get a warrant compelling a company—we’ll call that one Google—to hand over data about cell phones located in that area near the time of the crime. Here, the perimeter is 150-meter radius around the credit union. A football field is a hundred yards, and a meter is approximately one yard. So this is like a football field and a half circle around the credit union. That’s a pretty big circle, don’t you think?
[25:21] Larry: A pretty big circle, but then how does Google even have this information? What are they tracking? How do they know what to give up?
[25:29] Andy: This is why this is important. When you sign into your phone and say, “Yes, I would like Google Maps to track everywhere I go,” that’s where the data comes from. It’s a service called location history. The court describes it as follows: “Location history is what it sounds like. A time-stamped record of every place a cell phone has been, every two minutes or so. Location history draws from an array of sources to log a cell phone’s location, including WiFi, Bluetooth, beacons, cell sites, GPS, and IP addresses. The signals tracked can determine a cell phone’s location within 20 meters. It can also ascertain the phone’s elevation and reveal which floor within a building the phone is on. The district court called it the most sweeping, granular, and comprehensive tool existing today for collecting and storing location data.
[26:27] Larry: What? They know what floor of the building you’re on? I thought it could just pinpoint your location, but now it knows heights too. We need to think about that and sit with that for a second.
[26:36] Andy: Well, if you have ever done any study on GPS, they use four satellites at least. So you remember from your trigonometry in high school that once you have three, you can pinpoint a position with the three triangles, but then you throw in a fourth one. Now you get height. Alrighty. And then the warrant runs in three steps, which matters at the end. Step one, Google produces anonymized location data, no names for every phone in the geofence 30 minutes before to 30 minutes after the robbery. Step two officers narrow down the list and Google hands over more anonymized data over a two-hour window inside and outside the geofence. And then finally, step three officers narrow it down again, and Google turns over the identifying information, which includes names and phone numbers. And that’s for whoever’s left out of the dragnet that they already ran.
[27:35] Larry: So here’s the point we were sitting with: The court says, quote, “Google ultimately produced three cell phone users’ identifying information, including Mr. Chattery.” Three people and the government charged only one of them. So you’ve got two innocent people whose names and phone numbers got handed over to the government and the only thing protecting them was nothing in particular. This is everyone’s problem. And I’m sure we’re going to get back to it. But you just got put in a government database because you were at a scene of an armed robbery and you were just taking care of your normal business. And this is in the country that prides itself on privacy, right?
[28:19] Andy: No, we don’t have any good privacy laws here. You could have just driven by the place inside of that window. I’m going to be generous with Google and say if you popped in and out for five or ten seconds, it would look like you were only there briefly and you’d get cut early. But if you happen to be walking home and stop on the sidewalk for a moment to take a phone call, then you’re there long enough to be scooped up in this. Chattery’s own data shows he entered the geofence about 10 minutes before the robbery and headed toward a residential area immediately after leaving the bank. And don’t let me forget Larry, I’ll tell you how to beat all of this later.
[29:08] Larry: So factually, he’s a tough customer to feel sorry for, but whether Chattery is sympathetic is irrelevant to the doctrine and how the court treats it. And the court treats it that way to their credit. Now, the procedural history, because this got really messy. He moved to suppress the district court found that the geo-fence warrant quite plainly violates the right enshrined in the Fourth Amendment, but then denied the motion based on the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule. Funny, the court says it’s a violation as plain as day and the evidence stays in any way. Remember, it’s a theme that a divided four circuit panel affirmed on totally different reasoning. They reasoned that no search even occurred because Chattery did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the two hours worth of location history data voluntarily exposed to Google. Then sitting en banc, the full court affirmed at one sentence per curiam. And then they were evenly divided on whether a search even happened.
[30:20] Andy: So I don’t understand what you just said. So one sentence per curium on a question. I don’t understand what that means.
[30:28] Larry: Well, now you’re asking me like I’m a lawyer.
[30:34] Andy: You just play one on TV. So
[30:36] Larry: per curiam is speaking for the court and in unison. So, so the entire court agreed in the one sentence. Well, and they, now remember I didn’t read this case thoroughly, but based on that terminology, the whole court agreed and they issued a one-sentence order affirming as if it had never happened. So they basically flushed him down the toilet. Damn. All right then. Well, what did the Supreme Court take up? They took up one narrow question: whether the police violated the Fourth Amendment when obtaining Chattery’s location data. And Kagan wrote for five justices—Roberts, Sotomayor, Kavanaugh, and Jackson joined with her—and here’s what they held: “Police officers conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they acquired Chattery’s location data from Google because an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in cell phone location information, even though only for a limited time and from a third-party tech company.”
[31:40] Andy: Do you mind explaining how they got there? Well, they cited a
[31:44] Larry: They cited a case called Carpenter. In the Carpenter case, the court held that accessing cell site location information is a search because individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their physical movements. The court stated that it gives a detailed and encyclopedic portrait of a person’s whereabouts. And then the line I want you to mark: “it runs against everything, not just those under investigation and it travels back in time.”
[32:26] Andy: So it runs against everyone. There it is again.
[32:30] Larry: Yes, I like that. The whole architecture of the Fourth Amendment, the court says, was designed to place obstacles in the way of pervasive police surveillance. Meaning too much police surveillance. And then it makes the move: everything Carpenter relied on for cell site data applies well or better to location history. But help me understand why “better” because this is your racket. I don’t understand most of this stuff.
[33:02] Andy: Because location history pins you within 20 meters instead of sectors of an eighth to four square miles. So your cell phone towers—they don’t really tell you that you’re within cell signal range of that tower; it could be anywhere from a couple miles to four miles around that building. But when you get the GPS data down to 20 meters, I mean, you know exactly where someone is. If they’re 20 meters away from your house, they’re really close. The cell signal only tells you they might be in your neighborhood or town. And if it records you every two minutes, that’s a daily average of 720 chartings, which can tell you the floor someone is on. Cell signals don’t do that.
[34:02] Larry: That’s what you were trying to explain. And there’s even more. The court says most people don’t know cell site data exists, but location history is like a personal journal—your emails, documents, photographs, and calendars. It’s private information you expect to be shielded from the government. Now, the government had three arguments: first, that short-term data collection shouldn’t count as a violation. The court rejected this, saying protections kick in regardless of how much data is collected. Second, they argued it was covered by the third-party doctrine—that if you give your location to Google, you lose privacy expectations. But the court said no; like in Carpenter, this information is incomparably revealing and not truly shared as one normally understands it. Cell phones are indispensable for modern life.
[36:22] Andy: Well, I was just going to say that when someone gets out on supervision and their phone use is restricted, the Supreme Court says a phone is indispensable for participating in society. Yet our people often face challenges with this.
[36:43] Larry: but the counterbalance
[36:45] Larry: is they’re doing it with extreme monitoring. You’re not being told you can’t have access; you’re just being told we’re going to watch everything you do, and we’re going to try to violate you.
[36:54] Andy: And the third, the voluntariness piece?
[36:59] Larry: Oh, this is consent fiction. The government argued that turning on location history is a voluntary choice, and the court took that apart. The court said that argument ignores how Google users turn on location history. Now, I face this myself because I don’t understand it, so I say, “Turn on this thing.” Then my phone prompts me to do it, saying if I don’t, my phone won’t work correctly. But Google often warns users without disclosing how frequently locations are recorded, how precise it is, or that it might be eventually turned over to the government. When you’re told your phone won’t work correctly, that’s really not a voluntary choice, is it? And here’s the principle with the most reach: An app-by-app feature-by-feature method of granting fourth-amendment protection misapprehends the nature of modern cell phone use, where nearly everything requires some kind of affirmative act. A cell phone user is not to be viewed as sharing private information with third parties just by doing ordinary things on a cell phone.
[38:18] Andy: As you were going through that, I was reminded of maybe your state did it. Mine did not, but there was contact tracing during COVID. It would tell you if you were near someone who had COVID and help you if you ended up in proximity. Apple and Google made back-end code that could be queried by states. So if you were in a grocery store and came within proximity of another person who later tested positive for COVID, they could reach out to you and tell you maybe you’ve been exposed and should shelter. This is Bluetooth stuff, which only goes about 10 or 15 feet. Would you want to meet with someone if you were in a shopping center? So that was funny, but… And so you said there’s a registry echo in all of this too.
[39:24] Larry: There is an echo, and I want to be careful because no court has done anything with it yet. But the logic of calling something voluntary or shared with a third party when participation in modern life requires it—that’s the same wordplay we live in with the registry world where they’re calling a thing civil and regulatory and telling you it’s not punishment. The same reasoning that says clicking agree isn’t really voluntary could someday help us argue that agreeing to registration conditions isn’t a real waiver. Could. Maybe. Someday. No court is going to be rushing to make that leap, but the reasoning could be argued and hopefully somebody down the road will.
[40:05] Andy: I mean, you’ve said you don’t have to agree with the terms of the registry. You don’t. You do have a choice. They have a special program for you if you don’t. And they have a bed waiting for you and maybe up to three meals a day. Yep. All right, so dude one, Chachere one, does he walk?
[40:27] Larry: No, he doesn’t. Did Chachere actually win anything or did he win the right to keep fighting? A search ruling is not a suppression ruling. They’re two different animals. The court said… It’s right out. They said the conclusion that a Fourth Amendment search occurred does not resolve the case because the Fourth Amendment prohibits only unreasonable searches. And whether it was reasonable has yet to be determined. They answered the search question and left the rest, which is not uncommon. The Fourth Circuit never addressed the legality of the search because they said it wasn’t a search, remember?
[41:06] Andy: I guess so, yeah.
[41:07] Larry: But because this is a court of review, not a court of initial impression, they have to leave it to the Court of Appeals, which will point it back to the district court. And eventually, it’ll possibly go back up to the Court of Appeals again because the Court of Appeals have basically been slapped on this. They were told indirectly, you did a sloppy job. And the district court has actually been vindicated because he’s the one that ruled correctly in the beginning.
[41:36] Andy: All right, so then it goes back down, eh?
[41:40] Larry: It does. He won the battle and he may end up losing the war on remand. But he’s got a favorable district judge. The Fourth Circuit may ultimately overrule the district judge again because I can’t see any reason why the district judge would change his or her mind now after the Supreme Court has said what the Supreme Court has said. So it gets back to the district court. He’ll say, “I told you people.” So Chantry himself may… He may still lose after winning against the Supreme Court. But now there’s a footnote you flagged for me that Google changed. That one’s yours.
[42:27] Andy: Right, well, in footnote number two, and it almost makes the whole thing surreal. In July 2025, years after the geofence warrant used in this case, Google made a change. It now stores location history data on individual users’ devices rather than on its own servers. And Google represents that as a result, it is no longer capable of responding to geofence warrants that seek location history data. That’s interesting.
[42:58] Larry: Oh, I didn’t know that, but that’s funny. They basically said, we’re not going to be in the business of supplying new information. So the technology has half-mooted the practice. That’s great. It was before the Supreme Court. Google fixed it by making the data vanish and not by anybody admitting a right. Nobody vindicated a citizen’s interest. A company just rearranged the way it does business, but they did it for economic reasons.
[43:30] Andy: But it’s also interesting that you would then, if you did find the person, then you would still be able to get it, which I guess in my mind, Larry, if you’re holding all of the documents to Al Capone in your safe, they would still have to come to you, get the warrant, and open up the safe, and then they would have the documents. But it’s not like they could just drag something down the street and collect all the documents and then go sift through and say, ha-ha, we found Al Capone’s documents. They would actually have to get into the safe, and at least if this is true, and at least if it’s on your phone, they would at least have to get into your phone and get past your password, your thumbprint, your face lock, all that’s your butt print, whatever else you want to call it. They would at least have to get through that to get into the phone and access your location data.
[44:13] Larry: Yeah, well, remember we had a president that criticized Apple for not helping the FBI open a phone?
[44:23] Andy: I do, and we could go into that one.
[44:26] Larry: Do you happen to remember the name of that president?
[44:29] Andy: Was it the same one we have now?
[44:33] Larry: It was indeed.
[44:34] Andy: Okay. I mean, there’s some interesting details about that, that the FBI completely botched the case. If they hadn’t turned off the phone, they could have called Apple, and Apple could have gotten them a backup. But as soon as they turned it off, like the doors were locked. I might have those details slightly off, but I’m pretty close. They messed up, that they could have gotten it, but they didn’t. And so do you remember that the case just kind of went away? Yes. Did you know that the FBI or CIA bought a zero day for like a million bucks to break into those people’s phones? So then they didn’t need Apple. They got past the security lock by paying for it. Tax dollars at work, buddy. Alrighty. That’s what I like to remember: tax dollars. Keep going. So does that mean the surveillance stops? Because look at the trajectory. Google receives its first geofence warrant in 2016. Two years later, 900. Two years after that, more than 11,000. From one to over 11,000 in a handful of years. Holy moly. That’s totally why they moved it down to the person’s phone.
[45:53] Larry: They don’t want to be bought. It costs too much money. But no, it doesn’t stop. And the appetite, that appetite is exactly the point. You think it goes away because one vendor moved a database? The next vendor or the next tech technique fills the gap. Law enforcement won’t quit dragnets. They’ll just shift to another data source because we tell law enforcement to solve crime and that’s what we the people want, but we don’t ever tell them not to violate their constitutional rights because the average citizen doesn’t think this is ever going to happen to them. They think it only happens to bad guys.
[46:28] Andy: Of course.
[46:28] Larry: Of course.
[46:28] Andy: Now, so before we end this whole segment, there were some separate writings from some of the justices and you wanted to spend some time on Miss Barrett.
[46:36] Larry: I do. Oh, because hers is one that you should worry about. But let’s just go through the roll call. Jackson concurred. Sotomayor was on the right side. Gorsuch concurred in judgment only. And Alito wrote the main dissent, which Thomas joined in part. Barrett also wrote her own dissent. She said, I have no quarrel with Carpenter, which was the case that the majority used or when or with the court’s decision to grant cert to this case. But I agree with Justice Alito that under the Fourth Amendment precedent, including Carpenter and Chattery has no reasonable expectation of privacy in data about his public movements that he voluntarily disclosed to Google. I therefore respectfully dissent. I remember this is the type of justice you want packing in the Supreme Court. So just course pack in the Supreme Court with these kind of people and find out what your life gets like how your life turns.
[47:51] Andy: Now, on its face, though, that sounds narrow. At least she even says she’s fine with Carpenter.
[47:58] Larry: Well, it sounds narrow and there’s a trick to it. Watch Alito’s part; she signed onto his opinion. Because that’s the third-party doctrine with the gloves off. She said Chattery voluntarily conveyed his location information to Google, and Google created a digital paper trail of information. And by giving Google its location information for its own use, Chattery assumed the risk that Google might disclose information to others, including the police. Now, who would have ever thought about that?
[48:34] Andy: I get this feature where I can see where I was yesterday or the day before. What else might they use it for? I mean, like, oh right, they’re going to give it to the police. Like, I don’t think that’s where people’s minds go.
[48:46] Larry: Nobody would think that way. And so then they went on to say, “Chattery cannot now claim a reasonable expectation of privacy in these data.” Now, this is the dissenter saying this. The capper quote from jail fence centered on a credit unit, a public place for individuals lacking respect and an expectation of privacy. That is true; you don’t have an expectation of privacy in public as far as your physical visibility. But intruding into your personal devices that contain all sorts of information about you is a different story. I tell anybody anytime when you’re out in public, I can take a picture. You have no expectation of privacy. Now, I can’t retail and monetize that picture. If you don’t want to be videoed, don’t go out in public.
[49:28] Andy: Right. But at the same time, you’re not running around leaking all your bank records and tax documents all over the place either, correct? Or your nudie photos of your significant other. Can you put what you just talked about into plain English for us?
[49:45] Larry: Yes, we’ll strip it down. If you voluntarily handed it over, you assume the risk that it might get passed to the police. And if you’re out in public, you had no privacy to lose in the first place, according to these rulings. But those two together and what they really tell you is that you have essentially no privacy. Your digital location is a public place because your phone in your pocket is conveying your whereabouts every two minutes. So these are the people you want the court packed with. Keep packing.
[50:23] Andy: And who actually took that position because it wasn’t the whole right side of the bench, was it? No, Gorsuch was on the right side, Roberts was on the right side. But when you’re saying right, you don’t mean politically. You mean correct side of
[50:36] Larry: the majority. They were in the majority. So it’s the three liberals and some conservatives joined them. I’m giving Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Roberts credit, but I’m also doing what I frequently do. I’m bashing those who were not in favor of privacy and reminding people how they got on the court. And if you don’t like this, keep voting the way you did.
[50:58] Andy: Please sugarcoat it. Would you? So the wing they voted for came up short here.
[51:06] Larry: That is they came up definitely short. This is one thing I keep saying and nobody wants to hear: our folks vote conservative, law and order, black and blue, backing the blue. And then they act surprised when the law and order justices say the police can do anything—have your location data and keep your privacy? It’s like it was not hard to figure out that this was going to happen. Fortunately, there was enough of the conservatives who said, hey, no, we can’t be a part of this. But it would only take them a slightly more packed court for this decision to go through. Wouldn’t happen. It was the liberals who anchored the privacy here with a couple of conservatives crossing over. The three who you have left have nothing—nothing. Are there three of our audience members most loyal to these justices?
[51:55] Andy: Gotcha. All right. And then do me one last little bit of this. So the bottom line, how durable is this? Like, how much can we use this in the future? Is there anything here for us?
[52:06] Larry: I don’t know if I
[52:07] Andy: can
[52:09] Larry: get it’s quite as giddy as the script says, but it’s practical. Reach is already half mooted by Google’s internal change. And they went for Chattery himself is fragile. And so I wouldn’t get too euphoric about this. So I’m going to leave it like there.
[52:32] Andy: right. So, I wanted to tell you one thing. I heard of a person who may have multiple phones and would drop one off at his mom’s house and keep another here, all logged into the same Google account. What do you think that does to your Google location history?
[52:54] Larry: I never thought of that.
[52:55] Andy: That mixes it all up. It’s funny. And I have one other story for you and you can fact-check me on this one. You can go look up a Wired article. A guy put like a hundred cell phones in a red wagon and walked across a bridge. By doing so, with all the location data going off, it looked like there were a hundred cars stuck in a traffic jam, routing all the traffic around it. So no cars went over the bridge because this guy was walking a wagon with a hundred cell phones.
[53:29] Larry: He didn’t need a police escort to clear traffic.
[53:34] Andy: That’s very true. Well, that’s super interesting. I like that case. That’s fun. We can do those all the time.
Larry: Alrighty. Sounds good.
Andy: Hey, you know, my personal experience at the conference layer was that there was enough water pressure that you would not have had to bring your shower head and your pipe wrench and your pipe tape and all that stuff.
[53:52] Larry: Well, that does occasionally happen. The older hotels actually tend to have better water pressure than new ones.
[53:59] Andy: Oh, and this one’s right by the Harbor too. So maybe that has something to do with it. If it’s out in the middle of the desert, maybe you don’t have such good water pressure. So I don’t know. So the other thing though, I would tell you is that you would have had the duck. I’m super tall. So I definitely had the duck. I had to like bend over at the waist to get the shower to hit my head.
[54:18] Larry: Well, that would have been inconvenient if you had to do that.
[54:21] Andy: It’s not ideal, but I don’t care. It’s just for a few days. It’s all good. Anything else before we go? I mean, we’re at 53 minutes. I was not expecting us to go this long on short notice and on a Wednesday.
[54:31] Larry: Oh, so. Well, we missed two weeks in a row, so we owe people some entertainment.
[54:39] Andy: Well, please head over to registrymatters.co for show notes and links to FYPEducation. If you need to get there, you can go to FYPEducation.org. You can send us email at registrymatterscast at gmail.com. Leave an old-fashioned voicemail message at 747-227-4477. And you can certainly support us on Patreon. We so appreciate all the patrons we have. That’s at patreon.com/registrymatters. Larry, stay cool. I hope you try not to honk the horn at your neighbors too much. I hope they don’t pull out a Mac 10 or 9 or whatever and mow you down. Happy 4th of July, everybody. I’ll talk to you guys soon. Good night.
[55:26] Introduction: You’ve been listening to FYP.