Image: Holley Robinson, EDRM with AI.
Much of the litigation over geofencing has been under the Fourth Amendment in criminal cases, and there has been a lot of it. See, e.g., Certiorari Petition to U.S. Supreme Court in 4th Circuit Geofence Decision – E-Discovery LLC (Aug. 5, 2025); Alvarez v. State, 2025 WL 2346165, at *4 (Tex. App. Aug. 13, 2025); U.S. v. Brown, 2025 WL 1674283, at *14 (N.D. Ga. June 13, 2025)(“To be clear, the Court joins in the Fifth Circuit’s alarm at the Government’s widespread use of geofence warrants to drum up suspects out of thin air in the absence of other evidence. It runs counter to deeply rooted Fourth Amendment principles to permit the Government to ask Google to conduct a retrospective search of the location history data of hundreds of millions of users and to return to the Government a list of all persons within the vicinity of a crime. However, the facts of the case at issue here do not support this Court’s holding that the warrants were impermissible general warrants.”).
There is a substantial and growing body of scholarly and regulatory writing applicable to the use of digitally-obtained geographical information in other contexts, including civil litigation, information governance, and regulation. It would take multiple books to reach even the tip of the scholarly iceberg. This blog does not seek to climb that mountain. Instead, like a first-year law school class, it is intended as issue-flagging.
GEOFENCING IS BEGINNING TO APPEAR IN CIVIL LITIGATION
Geofencing is beginning to appear in civil litigation. In KalshiEX, LLC v. Hendrick, 2025 WL 1073495, at *1 (D. Nev. Apr. 9, 2025), a plaintiff moved to enjoin State agencies “from pursuing civil or criminal enforcement against Kalshi for offering event contracts in Nevada.” The State had sent Kalshi a cease-and-desist letter alleging that Kalshi’s actions were unlawful in Nevada.
Injunctive relief was granted for a number of reasons; however, in pertinent part: “Kalshi presents credible evidence that even if it could implement geofencing at great expense, it could not do so immediately as the defendants demanded. And, as discussed at the injunction hearing, there are questions about whether Kalshi could recover monetary damages against the defendants in either state or federal court and, even if it could, whether those damages would be capped such that Kalshi could not meaningfully be compensated for the millions of dollars it asserts it would have to spend to geofence out Nevada market participants.” Id. at *7 (emphasis added).
USE OF GEOTARGETTING POTENTIAL JURORS
One of the most fascinating uses of geofencing in civil litigation was an attempt to reach potential jurors by targeting advertisements around the courthouse in one of several hundred “Roundup” cases. Pilliod v. Vionsanto Co., 2019 Cal. Super. LEXIS 23599, at *7 (Alameda Cty. Super. Ct. Apr. 4, 2019)(unpublished).
Plaintiffs alleged personal injury caused by Monsanto’s Roundup product. The case was set for a jury trial “against the backdrop of substantial press coverage outside the courtroom of similar cases….”
Plaintiffs moved to preclude Monsanto from publishing advertisements about product-related issues. Among the various types of advertising, “at the hearing on 4/4/19, counsel for plaintiff asserted that Monsanto was using geofencing or geomarketing to target advertisements about the safety of Roundup to cellphones and other mobile electronic devices in the area of the courthouse. Plaintiff’s assert that this targeted advertising on a central issue in this case is jury tampering.” Id. at *6-7. Plaintiffs’ counsel asserted, without evidence, that “Monsanto is geomarketing to the courthouse.”
The Pilliod court wrote:
Assuming arguable misconduct, there are practical concerns. In contrast to persons in a courtroom with placards or buttons, the court cannot readily observe geomarketing. The court could, but will not, order Plaintiff’s and Monsanto to cease and desist from geomarketing the courthouse and to submit declarations of compliance. Even if issued, any such order precluding geomarketing would not preclude general marketing in Alameda County and the Bay Area, and the jurors might be exposed to such marketing at home and on their ways to and from the courthouse. The court is not persuaded that the alleged geomarketing is materially different from carrying signs outside a courthouse or carrying placards or wearing buttons inside a courtroom or that it requires a different judicial response.
Id. at *7-8 (emphasis added).
With the exception of Ms. Neff’s article which brought this decision to my attention, Shepard’s does not report any subsequent citation of this decision.
GEOFENCING, GEOTARGETING, AND GEO-BLOCKING IN SOME CIVIL CONTEXTS
One recent article defines and discusses the role of geofencing, geotargeting, and geo-blocking in some civil contexts. S. Neff, “Thinking Inside the Box: Geo-Fencing Technology Litigation and Lessons for the Consumer Financial Services Industry,” 78 Consumer Finance Law Quarterly Report 1 (2025).1
Oversimplified, geofencing occurs when law enforcement knows where and when a crime was committed and law enforcement serves a multi-step geofence search warrant to find out what cell phones were in the “geofenced” area at the relevant time, thus locating suspects. Uses in civil litigation can be hypothesized. X claims that A harassed X at 4 p.m., in the employer’s office building. Can geolocation data show that A – or, at least, A’s cell phone – was, or was not, at that location at that time?2
Geotargeting identifies devices currently in an area so that targeted marketing can be sent to those devices. A shopper in Store Y may receive a text about a special sale item located in Aisle 9 of that store while the customer is still shopping.
Geo-blocking is used to prevent access. For example, a seller that does not want to purposely avail itself of a particular forum may geo-block its website or advertising from that forum. And, “[i]n Ukraine, SpaceX used location data to create a geofence around Crimea so that the Ukrainian military could not access Starlink in that location because Musk did not want Starlink to be used offensively by Ukraine to gain territory that Russia controlled.” Gavin Small, 20 Duke J. Const. L. & Pub. Pol’y Sidebar 107, 113 (2025).
Geofencing may be more widespread than most of us recognize. In “Thinking Inside the Box,” Ms. Neff wrote:
Many financial service companies have adopted the use of geo-fencing and geo-location technologies. These products and services take advantage of these emerging technologies to improve the services provided and contour the products offered to consumers. While these technologies have much to offer, geo-fencing and geo-location are more frequently becoming the subject (or at least an aspect) of litigation. This Article explores the ways that geo-fencing and geo-location have found a presence in the American courtroom and the lessons this development has for consumer financial service companies. [emphasis added].
S. Neff, “Thinking Inside the Box: Geo-Fencing Technology Litigation and Lessons for the Consumer Financial Services Industry,” 78 Consumer Finance Law Quarterly Report 1 (2025).
Some commercial uses of geofencing are:
For example, consider a customer who enters a grocery store and crosses into an invisible geo-fence. While in the store, he may receive a text message with a linked coupon or a message about weekly specials or may see other focused advertising on social media. This is a prime example of an advertising geo-fence in action–providing targeted information and opportunities to a consumer as he enters the designated geo-fence area. In addition to advertising, geo-fences serve a variety of purposes, such as gathering data on location behavior, recording employee attendance, and improving resource management based on how locations are frequented. Importantly, geo-fences are increasingly used to ensure compliance with regulations. For example, Geo-fences can verify the location of a person placing a wager on a state-regulated wagering platform, ensuring that the user is not located in a county or parish that has expressly prohibiting such gaming. Similarly, geo-fences are used to limit the territory of internet-streamed radio broadcasts, helping unlicensed stations stay within the 150-mile exemption of the U.S. Copyright Act for streaming broadcasts online. Geo-fences also play a role in security and safety. States have created grant programs to use geo-fencing to protect schools from security threats. Additionally, geo-fences are used to guide commercial drivers away from restricted areas during political events or to track commercial boats for purposes of reducing pollution.
S. Neff, “Thinking Inside the Box: Geo-Fencing Technology Litigation and Lessons for the Consumer Financial Services Industry,” 78 Consumer Finance Law Quarterly Report 1 (2025).
Geo-targeting is a similar, but different concept: “While geo-fencing is triggered by a device moving into or out of a designated geo-fence, geotargeting focuses on the current location of a device, regardless of movement…. In the context of digital environments, such as internet browsers and online services, geotargeting can be used to tailor content and advertisements to a user’s location to enhance relevance and effectiveness. Ms. Neff wrote:
For example, when a user in Chicago opens the browser on her cell phone and searches for “Chinese restaurant,” the browser geotargets the user’s location and assumes she is searching for Chinese restaurants in Chicago, which is reflected [in] the search results. Similarly, the Federal Communications Commission authorized the Wireless Emergency Alerts System to use geotargeting to send messages to all devices within a specified area to receive emergency alerts. This is how a user receives AMBER Alerts or emergency shelter alters targeted to the user’s current location.
S. Neff, “Thinking Inside the Box: Geo-Fencing Technology Litigation and Lessons for the Consumer Financial Services Industry,” 78 Consumer Finance Law Quarterly Report 1 (2025).
Ms. Neff asks: “What lessons do criminal cases about geo-fencing warrants have for consumer financial services companies?” For example, she points out that any company using geofencing as a marketing or other commercial tool may find itself served with a search warrant for the data. That is an information governance consideration. Does management wish to take that risk?3
Geo-blocking, Ms. Neff wrote, is “using location technology to prevent access to websites or information” and she opines that it and geofencing are “some of the latest battlegrounds in personal jurisdiction fights, especially in cases involving e-commerce or internet jurisdiction.” Personal jurisdiction may be demonstrated by action purposely aimed at a forum state, such as seeking to contract or provide goods in that forum. Ms. Neff asks:
But what if a defendant uses geo-fencing or geo-blocking technology to intentionally avoid engaging with or doing business in the subject forum? The general sentiment is that the extent of a defendant’s efforts to utilize location technology to avoid transacting in a certain jurisdiction tend to demonstrate that a defendant did not purposefully avail itself of the privilege of conducting business in that for[u]m. Efforts to block contacts with a forum– even if not foolproof–demonstrate a defendant’s effort to avoid minimum contacts within a forum, and that the defendant has a due process interest in not being hailed into court in that forum. “To be sure, the proposition that a website’s affirmative geoblocking efforts should weigh against the exercise of personal jurisdiction is unobjectionable.” [emphasis added; citation omitted].
S. Neff, “Thinking Inside the Box: Geo-Fencing Technology Litigation and Lessons for the Consumer Financial Services Industry,” 78 Consumer Finance Law Quarterly Report 1 (2025).
However, Ms. Neff asserts that “the reverse is not necessarily true,” and a failure to geoblock is not a purposeful availment of the forum.4
The Duke Journal article notes that several states bar geofencing around physical and mental health care facilities. Geofencing can be used to “promote targeted products and services….” As one example, the Neff article states that, absent a legal prohibition: “Digital advertising firms can set up geofences around health care entities, and once a person crosses that invisible barrier, the person is bombarded with text messages and advertisements, urging the person not to seek reproductive or gender-affirming care.” [citation omitted]. While some states have barred the process, Ms. Neff wrote that others have not.
After discussing Pilliod v. Vionsanto Co., 2019 Cal. Super. LEXIS 23599 (Alameda Cty. Super. Ct. Apr. 4, 2019)(unpublished), Ms. Neff concludes:
For consumer finance companies engaging in high stakes litigation, geofencing targeted messages about a company’s commitment to transparency and fair practices could be a powerful tool to augment the conversation in advance of a jury trial. That said, the more narrowly the geographic area is targeted, the less likely it will survive scrutiny.
S. Neff, “Thinking Inside the Box: Geo-Fencing Technology Litigation and Lessons for the Consumer Financial Services Industry,” 78 Consumer Finance Law Quarterly Report 1 (2025).
As a matter of information governance, if nothing else, entities planning to use geofencing, geotargeting, or geo-blocking should make an informed analysis.
A SAMPLING OF GEOFENCING AND ITS COUSINS IN CIVIL CONTEXTS
As noted at the outset, this topic could fill books and is the subject of numerous law review and journal articles. A few samples follow:
Lawyer Advertising
“’Weird, this is the fourth ad I have gotten on my phone from a personal injury firm since I’ve been here. It’s like this thing can read my mind …,’ Tanner thinks as he browses his phone while he sits in the University Hospital waiting room. He is waiting to see his elderly father, Cole, who just had a fall at the supermarket.” Trevor Warren, “En Garde!: Geofencing and the Pressing Need to Update ABA Model Rule 7.3,” 63 U. Louisville L. Rev. 187, 187 (2024). “This technology is already being used by retail giants such as Target.” Id. The article states: “With the realization of a growing need for regulation of attorneys using geofencing to solicit their legal services, and in light of a silent ABA, some states have issued their own advisory opinions.” Id. at 204.
With the realization of a growing need for regulation of attorneys using geofencing to solicit their legal services, and in light of a silent ABA, some states have issued their own advisory opinions.
Trevor Warren, “En Garde!: Geofencing and the Pressing Need to Update ABA Model Rule 7.3,” 63 U. Louisville L. Rev. 187, 204 (2024).
Privacy and Health Care
“In September 2017, the Attorney General of Massachusetts settled its suit against Massachusetts-based advertising company, Copley Advertising, LLC, for violating state consumer protection laws. Copley had created a ‘geofence’ around Massachusetts reproductive health facilities, tracking consumers’ physical location and disclosing that location to third-party advertisers.” Lianne Foley, “Targeted Advertising in the Healthcare Industry: Predicted Privacy Concerns,” 27 Annals Health L. Advance Directive 62, 62 (2017). “[Copley Advertising] can set up a mobile geofence around any area.” Id. at 65 (emphasis added); see Hana Ferrero, “Identifiable to Whom? Clarifying Biometric Privacy Rights in Illinois and Beyond,” 92 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1027, 1040, n. 79 (2025)(“Prohibiting the use of geofences helps ensure patients’ privacy regarding visits to healthcare facilities (e.g., abortion clinics, substance abuse treatment, and mental health clinics) and their underlying medical conditions.”).
Reproductive Rights Privacy & Political Campaigns
“Targeted advertising is a critical, hotly contested policy issue for at least four reasons.” Derek E. Bambauer, “Target(Ed) Advertising,” 58 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1429, 1435, 1509 (2025):
“One Wisconsin group used geofencing techniques to identify the phones brought into the offices of health care providers such as Planned Parenthood and then used the device IDs to target ads to their owners on social media platforms such as Facebook and Snapchat. Similar campaigns ran in New Jersey, California, Florida, and Colorado. Abortion rights groups expressed concerns that just the use of targeted advertising in this context is problematic from a health privacy perspective. And while advertising can often lead to outcomes that are beneficial for all involved, such as when a consumer purchases a product that they did not previously know about but ultimately find useful, the abortion geofencing campaign is likely one that is a zero-sum game…. [R]esearchers used targeted advertising to display ads about the risks of climate change to members of the Republican Party in a pair of competitive Congressional districts….”
Abortion Clinics
“Protesters have used geofencing so that third party data brokers bombard abortion clinic visitors’ phones and devices with targeted information about crisis pregnancy centers and adoption agencies. Anti-abortion groups can also purchase geolocation datasets for a specific location, such as Planned Parenthood facilities, from data brokers. The information these brokers provide is anonymized, but does provide assumptions about where the smartphones that visited the chosen location spend the night specified by census tract.” Carson Goos, Elaine McCabe, “Abortion Protesting,” 26 Geo. J. Gender & L. 245, 260 (2025)
Employment Issues
Another article wrote:
It’s 10:00 p.m. Do you know where your employees are? For an increasing number of employers, the answer is yes. The location data collected from employees’ smartphones makes it easy, and increasingly inexpensive, to track the whereabouts of employees whenever their phones are with them.
The average person has more than eighty apps downloaded on their smartphone and never leaves home without that phone. Of those eighty-plus apps, many are recording that phone’s location every few seconds. That information is then sold to third-party data collectors, who sell that location data in a lucrative and growing open market. This practice has turned into a $21 billion location data industry that is predicted to more than double to $53 billion by 2030.
Although this data is touted as being anonymized, with the right knowledge and motivation, it is easy to figure out which data sets belong to a specific person. In 2018, the New York Times tested this by trying to figure out which data set, out of millions, belonged to the smartphone of Lisa Magrin, a forty-six-year-old math teacher. It did not take long for them to discover that only one device traveled from Magrin’s home in upstate New York at 7:00 a.m. to her school fourteen miles away and then back to her home late that afternoon. That was sufficient for the Times to track all her smartphone’s movements. Ms. Magrin was disturbed to discover that the Times reporters had learned when she went to Weight Watchers, had a doctor’s visit for a medical procedure, took her dog on a hike, and spent a night at her ex-boyfriend’s house.
Elizabeth A. Brown & Matthew M. Cummings, “Every Step You Take: Securing Employees’ Location Data Privacy,” 26 Minn. J.L. Sci. & Tech. 1, 4–5 (2025).
“In July 2021, the Catholic news outlet Pillar outed a prominent Catholic priest using location data to discover that he attended LGBTQ+ bars and nightclubs, forcing him to resign.
In 2022, ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, admitted to firing four employees after it learned those employees were using location data to track the whereabouts and relative proximity of journalists and coworkers they suspected of whistleblowing.” Id. at 5.
“For example, if an employer is aware of a unionization drive, they could geofence that area and see who attended it.” Id. at *6.
Employment Issues (Cont.)
“Employers may use geofencing to receive alerts when an employee, equipment, or electronic records enters or exits a defined area. Employers may protect assets, track employees’ location, track employees’ performance, e.g., deliveries per hour, and track hours worked. A geofence may also alert an employer to an unauthorized entry or unauthorized equipment removal and may exclude equipment. An employer can link geofences to equipment, so that it stops working when removed from that area. An employee may use a geofence to protect his privacy or property.” William E. Hartsfield, 1 Investig. Employee Conduct § 6:37.
Regulation of Drones and Use at Major Events
“[S]cholars … propose that the adoption of new geofencing technology will solve the problems created by the introduction of widespread drone usage. In particular, this would obviate the need for registration, and for the FAA to place undue restrictions on issuing beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) permits…. Geofencing may indeed be the future for drone manufacturers. Unlike the current regulatory regime, it solves a myriad of problems posed by drones which are not properly addressed under the current regulatory scheme.” John Ricci, “No Drone Zones: Assessing the FAA’s Role in Implementing Geofencing and the Future of Drone Regulations in the United States,” U. Ill. J.L. Tech. & Pol’y, Spring 2022, at 161, 163.
“Developers can create geofences which can be read by any device containing an onboard GPS system with the requisite software to detect the geofence. Once triggered, the geofence can be used to serve any number of functions from sending text messages, triggering events in mobile games, or even targeting advertising.” Id. at 168.
“Geofencing is a far more effective solution to the problem of airspace safety than anything that the FAA has attempted to date…. For example, geofencing technology can help keep drones out of dangerous areas…. Temporary geofences can be set up around huge public events (e.g., the Super Bowl, parades, or concerts), hazardous locations (e.g., wildfires, pipeline explosions, nuclear plants), or people (e.g., the president).” Steve Calandrillo, et. al., “Deadly Drones? Why FAA Regulations Miss the Mark on Drone Safety,” 23 Stan. Tech. L. Rev. 182, 188, 221, 247 (2020).
“Geographical restrictions also found a particularly striking application in the drone industry. DJI, a leading drone manufacturer, employed a Geospatial Environment Online (GEO) system that was built into every one of its drones and which used GPS data to enforce no-fly zones near sensitive locations. DJI’s geofencing system categorized airspace into five zones by color: Red (Restricted, no-fly), Blue (Authorization, unlockable with proof), Orange (Enhanced Warning, extra confirmation required), Yellow (Warning, alerts but no blocks), and Gray (Altitude, where flight is allowed but limited to a specific maximum height).” João Marinotti, “Defragging Ownership: How Corporations Sliced, Diced, and Sold the Bundle,” 100 Ind. L.J. 1931, 1951 (2025).
Copyright Royalties
Courts should allow broadcasters to use geofencing to avoid copyright royalties. Bradley Ryba, “Iheartgeo-Fencing?: The Section 114 Exemption That Illustrates Why Full Sound Recording Rights Are the Sine Qua Non for A Vibrant Music Industry,” 20 Marq. Intell. Prop. L. Rev. 33, 39 (2016)
Franchise Regulation and Targeting
“Today’s franchise marketing may involve ‘traditional’ advertising, such as advertisement in franchise trade publications or in local or regional business publications; but more often, franchisors are utilizing the technologies of the twenty-first century, such as ‘Google Ads,’ ‘Facebook Ads,’ ‘re-marketing,’ or ‘geo-fencing’ or ‘geo-targeting.’ As applied to digital advertising, the current state of franchise advertising regulations is archaic and antiquated … and frankly inapplicable in most situations.” Mark J. Burzych, “Franchise Advertising in the Digital Age: Regulators Need to Contemporaneously Address Advancing Advertising Technologies or Step Aside,” 40 Franchise L.J. 221 (2020).
“As described in further detail below, popular advertising technology such as Google Ads, retargeting, remarketing, and geo-targeting, or geo-fencing does not squarely fit in the current regulatory scheme.” Id.
Advertisers can maximize their return on investment (ROI) and click conversions on online ads through geo-targeting and geo-fencing. Geo-targeting is simply customizing an ad campaign to reach audiences (through their computers or mobile devices) who are physically located in a particular geographic area. Both Google Ads and Facebook Ads offer advertisers the option to limit a particular campaign to a geographic area, such as the United States or Michigan. If advertisers want to get even more geographically specific with their ad audiences, they can pursue a geo-fencing strategy.
Geo-fencing allows advertisers to create a virtual box around a geographic location, wherein their ads will appear only on computers or mobile devices that are physically located in the box. Using GPS or Internet users’ IP addresses, advertisers can reach out only to specific users who enter a geographic area relevant to the advertiser’s business. For example, a retail establishment in a shopping mall may draw a several-block radius around the mall to specifically target Internet users who may either be out in the vicinity of the mall, or are already shopping inside. Alternatively, a local pizzeria (say one of two in town) can draw a geo-fence around not only its own location, but also around the location of its competitor, specifically targeting people in the vicinity of its competitor with advertisements showing its comparatively lower prices or current promotional deals.
Many companies take advantage of geo-fencing when customers download their mobile app and opt-in to the app’s “location services.” By allowing GPS to track where the device is located, advertisers can send push notifications, text messages, or PPC (pay-per-click) ads to the device. However, geo-fencing is available to companies that do not have a mobile app to track customers’ movements, and any business with access to Google or Facebook can set up a geo-fencing marketing campaign.
Advertisers can set up geo-fencing campaigns through either Google or Facebook relatively easily. Google Ads users can manually enter a specific location to target their ad campaigns, rather than selecting an entire state or country. Alternatively, advertisers may choose to target a radius of miles around a specific location, allowing the advertisers to maximize the specificity of their targeted audience.
Facebook users have an identical option. When customizing their Facebook ad campaign, advertisers can target their ads to a specified location, such as a particular state or country. If the advertiser wants to be even more specific, Facebook provides an interactive map that allows the advertiser to drop a “pin” on a central location and determine a radius of miles surrounding the pin where the ad campaign will be targeted. Although the minimum radius an advertiser can draw is one mile, advertisers can be even more specific by excluding certain geographic areas captured by the radius.
Id. at 233-34.
Some Regulatory Efforts
“Though no federal standard yet exists for geolocation data tracking, twelve states have enacted statutes that address data privacy practices in regard to consumers’ geolocation data. Many consider the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (‘VCDPA’), which took effect on January 1, 2023, as one of the leading state approaches on the topic. The VCDPA requires controllers of data to obtain affirmative consent from Virginians to process and sell their sensitive data, including their precise geolocation data.” Eliza Smith-Driggs, “The ‘Right to Be Let Alone’ Should Apply to Geolocation Tracking Within the Home,” 30 Rich. J.L. & Tech. 495, 4 (2024).
“This Note also recommends that Virginia legislators require companies to enable a geofence around a consumer’s home so the consumer can choose when she wants her data collected…. To encourage even more control and home privacy, smart devices could ask homeowners whether they want their geolocation data tracking services turned off once they enter their home…. The default should be that the geofence blocks all trackers. But, for example, if one of the trackers is the homeowner’s mobile carrier needing location data to send a cell signal, the homeowner should be able to manually allow her carrier into the geofence to receive cell service.” Id. at 65.
“Buying a Way” Around the Fourth Amendment?
“Well before Dobbs leaked, the Secret Service, IRS, U.S. military, DEA, ICE, CBP, FBI, and governmental entities at the state and local levels had all purchased data from brokers without obtaining Fourth Amendment search warrants. Lawmakers had already begun investigating these entities for “buy[ing] [their] way around the Fourth Amendment.” Andrew Wade, “The Clocks Are Striking Thirteen: Congress, Not Courts, Must Save Us from Government Surveillance Via Data Brokers,” 102 Tex. L. Rev. 1099, 1101–02 (2024)(cleaned up).
Geofence Data Must Be Correctly Interpreted to Avoid Error
Geofence data tracks a device, not a person. “For Jorge Molina, his wrongful arrest arose when a geofence search revealed that a cell phone logged into his accounts was present at the time of a murder; police rushed to arrest him, ignoring evidence that his abusive stepfather used his phone and car.” Mary D. Fan, “Suspecting with Data,” 109 Minn. L. Rev. 2253, 2256, 2262-63 (2025)(emphasis added).
Geofence data tracks a device, not a person.
Michael Berman, E-Discovery LLC.
“The arrest at Molina’s workplace shattered the young man’s life, resulting in his mugshot and name plastered over the news as a killer, six days of incarceration, and an arrest in his records that jeopardized his career and educational goals.” Id.
Contract Enforcement
“Geofencing allows lenders and dealers to wield significant control over drivers post-transaction. Such features enable lenders to disable a car once it exits a predetermined area established by the lender. Once a lender receives an alert of the violation, the lender can remotely disable the vehicle to limit the driver’s mobility.” Stacy-Ann Elvy, “The Vehicle Monitoring and Collection Technology Era,” 110 Iowa L. Rev. 43, 69 (2024).
Geofencing allows lenders and dealers to wield significant control over drivers post-transaction. Such features enable lenders to disable a car once it exits a predetermined area established by the lender. Once a lender receives an alert of the violation, the lender can remotely disable the vehicle to limit the driver’s mobility.”
Stacy-Ann Elvy, “The Vehicle Monitoring and Collection Technology Era,” 110 Iowa L. Rev. 43, 69 (2024).
Notes
