Minnesota bill says warrants that let police sweep up data near a crime scene should be illegal

FILE - The Google Maps app is seen on a smartphone, March 22, 2017, in New York. (AP Photo/Patrick Sison, File)

By CLEO KREJCI/MinnPost MinnPost

As the U.S. Supreme Court decides a case on the constitutionality of reverse location warrants, Minnesota lawmakers look to enact a ban.

While some call reverse location warrants a critical tool for criminal investigations, others call them a breach of the U.S. Constitution.

Either way, they are being used in Minnesota.

With a judge’s order, those warrants allow law enforcement to gather data revealing cellphones and other devices that were present in a certain place at a certain time. Law enforcement can request data related to crime scenes – or more expansive areas – and work backwards to look for suspects.

A group of bipartisan Minnesota lawmakers says they should be illegal except in emergency scenarios. They argue reverse location warrants, sometimes called “geofence” or “dragnet” warrants, cast too broad a net and violate fourth amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

The concern is they can gather data on thousands of people who attended an event of interest to law enforcement, like a protest or a funeral.

“We do believe that we have to balance our constitutional rights and public safety so that we’re not essentially sending law enforcement in to search for a needle in a haystack by exponentially increasing the size of the haystack,” Sen. Erin Maye-Quade, DFL-Apple Valley, said during a hearing on March 9.

Maye-Quade proposed a Senate bill to ban those warrants in most cases along with Sen. Eric Lucero, R-Dayton, and Sen. Omar Fateh, DFL-Minneapolis as original sponsors.

The question as to whether reverse location warrants violate constitutional protections is a national one. It’s currently subject to an ongoing case before the U.S. Supreme Court that will hear oral arguments in April.

The Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association and the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension argue the bill as written is too broad. It would prohibit those warrants except in the case of a “sudden emergency,” plus allow anyone whose information was obtained during the search to sue law enforcement.

Both also signaled a willingness to negotiate with lawmakers in light of data privacy concerns.

Law enforcement groups say the warrants are a critical tool

Between 2018 and 2020, the number of reverse location warrants in Minnesota rose from 22 to 173. Technically that’s an increase of 686%, according to the data, which just corresponds with requests like those received by Google.

Maye-Quade cited that data in her testimony.

In 2023, Google announced it would stop storing location data in a way that would make it susceptible to those reverse location warrant requests. By July 2025, according to the company, all location history data previously stored on Google servers had been deleted or moved to device storage only.

Still, groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation have cast doubt on whether that fix is enough.

And either way, it appears the warrants are still used to some degree in Minnesota, given law enforcement groups in the state argue they play a critical role in solving complex investigations.

In a March 5 letter to lawmakers, BCA Superintendent Drew Evans said an outright ban on those warrants “would have a major detrimental effect on public safety in Minnesota.”

“There are numerous examples of case investigations where reverse location data has saved lives, even just recently,” Evans said.

But Evans said he supports “reasonable safeguards for data privacy protections” and would be “more than willing to collaborate on possible solutions to implement more safeguards while still preserving such an important technological tool.”

A BCA spokesperson told MinnPost the agency does not store search warrant data in a way that shows how many reverse location warrants were used in recent years.

Police chiefs association President Jay Henthorne told lawmakers on Monday that digital evidence is often all that’s available in modern criminal investigations. Reverse location warrants are used when investigators don’t know who committed the crime, allowing police to identify devices present at a crime scene and find suspects.

“This can generate leads in otherwise unsolvable cases,” he said. “Removing this tool will make it significantly harder to identify suspects in serious crimes.”

Those warrants also require probable cause and a judge’s signature. Henthorne said the data provided is only used to begin an investigation by providing leads that must be corroborated with more evidence and often, other warrants.

“It functions similarly to a tip that helps investigators know where to look next,” he said.

Lucero, a Republican, says ban is pro-Constitution

Still, the counterargument is that reverse location warrants gather data about anyone – opening them up to unnecessary law enforcement scrutiny.

That’s why, as written, the Senate bill would prohibit warrants to gather information on devices that searched for a specific keyword, phrase or website. It would also prevent similar searches for GPS coordinates, cell tower and WiFi connectivity data.

Lucero said during the March 9 hearing that the bill should not be seen as anti-law enforcement and instead, pro constitutional principles.

“We simply want to make sure that those time tested principles are protected in the new digital realm,” Lucero said.

Lucero referenced the text of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures unless a warrant specifies a particular place and person or thing to be seized.

“Reverse search warrants are the antithesis of that,” he said.

Senate lawmakers discussed their bill for the first time in the Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee on March 9. House lawmakers discussed a companion bill, originally proposed by Rep. Sandra Feist, DFL-New Brighton, in the Judiciary Finance and Civil Law Committee on Feb. 24.

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This story was originally published by MinnPost and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.