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WSJ Opinion: Potomac Watch

The Bank Robber, the Supreme Court, and the 'Geofence' Warrant for Cellphone Data

WSJ Opinion: Potomac Watch

The Wall Street Journal

News, Society & Culture

4.22.8K Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2026

⏱️ 27 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Police caught Okello Chatrie using location data from Google, and now he wants the Justices to say this violated the Fourth Amendment, which protects against "unreasonable searches and seizures." Plus, the Court hears arguments on whether cancer lawsuits against the weed killer Roundup are preempted by federal law. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

I think the potential of Agenic is to rethink how work gets done overall. It challenges all sorts of traditional orthodoxies around how organizations execute the work at hand. That's Jason Gersatus, CEO of Deloitte U.S., talking about the transformational potential of A.Gentic AI. Join him later to learn why agents are a game changer for businesses across industries.

0:25.6

From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.

0:31.5

The Supreme Court takes up two big cases, first on whether and how the Constitution protects

0:37.1

the privacy of a convicted

0:38.9

bank robber's cell phone location data. And second, on whether lawsuits against the maker of the

0:44.6

weed killer roundup are preempted by federal herbicide laws and regulations. Welcome, I'm Kyle

0:51.3

Peterson with the Wall Street Journal. We're joined today by my colleagues on the

0:56.1

WSJ's opinion pages, columnists Kim Strassel, and Alicia Finley. A consequential Monday at the

1:04.0

high court this week, the justice is first taking up a case called Chattray v. United States.

1:09.2

This involved a man who was convicted of robbing at gunpoint,

1:13.3

a credit union in Virginia of nearly $200,000. Police eventually caught him using what is called a geofence

1:20.5

warrant. This takes a bit of explaining. First thing to understand is that the robber had opted

1:26.2

into a feature on his Google account

1:28.7

that saved a location diary of his history of where he had been. Police in this case,

1:35.2

then, seeing on surveillance footage that the robber had a cell phone, asked Google for

1:40.6

anonymous data on anybody who was within 150 feet of the crime scene 30 minutes before and after,

1:47.5

then got another hour of anonymous data after winnowing it down to a handful of accounts,

1:53.0

and then police asked Google to unmask three of those accounts. One of those was the robber

1:58.7

who was then found with $100,000 and a pistol at his apartment.

2:03.2

The question now is whether that was a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects Americans

2:08.0

against unreasonable searches and seizures. Let's listen to a piece of this argument. First here is

2:13.0

Chief Justice John Roberts, tangling with the lawyer for the robber, Adam Utikowski.

...

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