Your phone knows where you’ve been—and so do many others

Every time your phone updates your location, it’s not just sharing that data with your carrier. Tech companies, app developers, and even local governments collect this information to help sell ads, solve crimes, or sometimes just keep an eye on people. The Supreme Court is now deciding whether police should need a warrant to dig through years of someone’s location history—even if that person is just an innocent bystander near a crime scene. The case started with a bank robbery in Virginia. Investigators asked Google for location data from every device within a 17-acre area around the bank at the time of the heist. That data pointed to Okello Chatrie, who was later charged. But Chatrie’s lawyers argue that treating hundreds of people as potential suspects just to find one criminal is like searching every home in a town for stolen goods—something the Constitution was supposed to prevent after the American Revolution.Judges seem worried about how far this tech can go. They asked what would stop the government from tracking everyone at a political rally or religious gathering. While some argue these tools catch criminals faster, others point out how easily they could be misused. License-plate readers, for example, scan millions of cars daily, helping some police departments solve car thefts but also creating a database of where everyone drives. Tech companies say they can refuse requests, but others—like Flock Safety, which tracks license plates in thousands of neighborhoods—continue sharing data with police. Some cities refuse to work with them due to their ties to immigration enforcement, showing how quickly privacy debates turn political. The bigger question: If the government can access your past movements without strong limits, does anyone truly have private life left?