The federal government will rifle through the location data of half a billion smartphones to catch a single bank robber, but if a state dares ask for proof of citizenship to stop illegal aliens from voting, the establishment cries foul.
The Supreme Court’s latest moves perfectly capture the bipartisan failure of the ruling class: your Fourth Amendment rights are negotiable when the Justice Department wants a dragnet, but securing the ballot box and the southern border is treated as an attack on democracy.
According to USA Today, the Supreme Court ruled this week on the case of Okello Chatrie, convicted of a 2019 Virginia bank robbery. Police used a "geofence" warrant to force Google to sift through 500 million customers' location data to find phones near the crime scene. The court admitted this is a "search" under the Fourth Amendment. Justice Elena Kagan wrote that an individual has a "reasonable expectation of privacy in records about his cell phone's location, and police intrude on that constitutionally protected interest when they demand the information."
But the court punted the actual accountability back to lower courts to decide if the search was reasonable. The Justice Department argued that blocking such mass surveillance would "handicap police searching for murderers, kidnappers and robbers." So, the state can sweep up millions of innocent Americans' data—tracking your location within 3 meters every 2 minutes—and the government's defense is that it only named three suspects out of 500 million. A dozen innocent people at a nearby church were swept up in the dragnet, but the feds consider that acceptable collateral damage in the name of security.
Meanwhile, as the federal government asserts the right to track your every move, it fights tooth and nail against states trying to enforce basic sovereignty. The Washington Examiner reported that the Supreme Court will take up an Arizona voter registration case. Arizona simply wants applicants using state forms to provide proof of citizenship and wants officials to remove noncitizens from voter rolls. The RNC petition noted Arizona has had to defend these "common-sense steps" from federal lawsuits.
The message from Washington is clear: the government can track your phone within three meters to see if you're near a crime scene, but asking if someone is actually a citizen before they vote is a bridge too far. The Examiner also noted the court upheld a Mississippi law allowing late-arriving mail ballots to be counted, while Arizona's effort to verify citizenship is treated as a legal crisis.
The ruling class wants a high-tech surveillance state for American citizens and an open door for everyone else. They will sacrifice your Fourth Amendment rights on the altar of security, while leaving the actual border wide open and suing states that try to verify who is voting. Until the courts start protecting the Constitution for the people it was written for, your smartphone—and your sovereignty—remain under siege.
