Post #1735577

Sadly no. A warrant is only required to compel someone to hand over information. The issue is that often information can be gathered in public, which doesn’t require anyone to be compelled to hand something over, so no warrant was required. This precedent made sense when it was established–it would be silly to require a sheriff to have a warrant to simply observe something happening in front of them. But it has become deeply problematic as surveillance technology has emerged, since they can now legally track almost everything you’re doing by buying information from various tech companies who retain all sorts of data on you.