Behind the Blog: With Blogs Like These, Who Needs a Private Jet

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Chatrie v. United States that the Fourth Amendment protects people's location data, affirming that even short-term surveillance of physical movements constitutes a search. The decision, covered by 404 Media, marks a significant victory for privacy advocates.

This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss the Supreme Court, the private jet, and AI on the TV. JOSEPH: I used to cover court cases and judge’s opinions a lot more back at Motherboard. Sometimes it was in cases I broke news in, like that time the FBI secretly ran a dark web child abuse website https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-fbi-hacked-over-8000-computers-in-120-countries-based-on-one-warrant-en-id/?ref=404media.co . Other times it is big decisions that have wider impacts on privacy, surveillance, and government power. Here’s big news regarding the latter sort of decision. I first saw news of it on the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s blog https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/victory-supreme-court-says-constitution-protects-peoples-location-data?ref=404media.co . As it says at the start: “You have an expectation of privacy in location data that reveals your movements in the physical world, and even short-term surveillance of these movements is a search subject to the Fourth Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today in Chatrie v. United States.” This post is for paid members only Subscribe /membership/ Sign up for free access to this post Subscribe /signup/ Sign in /signin/