MIDLOTHIAN, VIRGINIA — The U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether the police technique known as geofencing is constitutional under the Fourth Amendment. The case stems from a bank robbery in Midlothian, Virginia, in which a robber pulled out a gun and fled with $195,000.

Police in Virginia used geofencing to tap into Google's databases to identify who was near the scene of the robbery. Geofencing allows the government to draw a virtual fence around a geographic area where a crime was committed. After drawing the virtual fence, the government seeks a warrant to require a tech company to search its data and identify any of its users who were within the geofence at the time of the crime.

The Fourth Amendment bans unreasonable searches of people, their homes, papers, and effects unless police obtain a warrant from a neutral magistrate and the search is aimed at obtaining specific evidence of a crime. The case has drawn attention because geofencing warrants may require tech companies to search the data of many users who had no connection to the crime in question, raising the issue of whether such broad data requests comply with the Fourth Amendment's requirement that searches target specific evidence.

The question before the Supreme Court is whether geofencing is ingenious, Orwellian, or both.