"In a sharp rebuke to President Trump, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the Constitution guarantees automatic birthright citizenship to virtually all children born in the United States."
"Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the court's 6-3 opinion."
"The decision firmly rejected the executive order that Trump issued on the first day of his second term. It sought to bar citizenship for babies born in the U.S. to parents who either entered the country illegally or who are living and working here legally with temporary visas. The executive order never went into effect because every lower court judge who reviewed it concluded, in the words of one judge, that it was 'blatantly unconstitutional.'"
I'm here. If you remember or have a way to back check, you will see that I've previously stated that the President cannot negate a Supreme Court precedent with an executive order. I disagree with the ruling but it's what I expected.
Back to Steve's post. Given today's technology, I think the Supremes were in error in ruling that geofencing requires a warrant because of an expectation privacy regarding cell phone location. In principle it is no different than any other location data - including eyewitnesses, doorbell camera videos offered up by homeowners, street cameras, store cameras, speed cameras and license plate readers.
Part of the issue with the geolocation data - I haven't followed the SCOTUS case or ruling closely enough to say anything about the specifics - is that due to E911 regulations, you cannot turn off location data collection and still receive calls.
I'm not sure where I stand in terms of requesting geodata from public areas (I've built numerous apps and devices that do this kind of tracking), but asking for someone to give up their expectation of privacy just to be able to answer calls on private property seems to be a bit much. The problem is that we do not have great maps that would designate some areas as "ok to track" and others as "respect the occupants' privacy".
In any case, the fact that this data IS available AND queryable really shifts the balance of power between parties seeking to maintain some form of privacy and those seeking to pierce that veil.
(My latest tech experiments have been with off-grid radio technology, where advertising your location is possible, but configurable.[1])
Your technical knowledge and expertise are impressive. I would not know where to begin tracking routines. My introduction to computer stuff was a tour of the Georgia Tech computer center sometime about 1960. The computing hardware filled up an area bigger than a high school basketball gym. My first interaction with a computer was to give my structural analysis professor a number of simultaneous equations intended to describe a structure that was several degrees indeterminant. My memory is not all that clear, but I think he mentioned the computer arriving a solution by iteration. I got a perfect score on that assignment and a B for the course which I could have done much worse on.
I never thought about computers (other than in maintenance of military air defense control systems and crypto systems) again until 1968 when I called on my department's data guys to help compute flood water levels for a lake discharge channel to a major (by Georgia standards) river. I observed their data input, and the subsequent aborted program runs. My only input was that the calculated values exceeded the computer limits and that they should rewrite the data in scientific notation. That worked.
That's a long story to explain how limited computers were before I was 30 years old. And I was in my 40s before I was forced to learn more when my company adopted a PC based data system.
The fun thing now is that I'm getting into radio in a big way as we try to set up this mesh network in Chicago (and I help my little brother set up one in New Mexico). That's more your domain of expertise, if I recall correctly.
(I still need to finish studying for the ham exams and get a proper license!)
I remember from Signal Corps ROTC that continuous wave, CW, provided maximum range for the radios of that time period. The military trained Morse code operators for when that extra range might be needed. One of my very smart roommates (3.98 GPA) was a serious ham radio operator and I became interested. He explained the requirements to me and offered some basic training. We got to Morse code, a requirement at the time, and he told me I would never pass the testing. He was sincere and nice and thanked me for writing some of his papers in non-technical electives so he could date but said he could not get me up to speed.
I think the difference in the latter part is that video of physical objects is different than GPS/telemetry data - and of course a warrant and subpoena is needed in the previous examples with the exception of government-owned devices, excepting where the owners of said devices voluntarily provide the government that data.
I'm not a legal scholar but I feel geofencing is a legitimate way to develop a list of suspects. I suppose that, with a lot of manpower and a great deal of effort, it would be possible to misuse the data. If it's not legitimate police work, the President showed good judgment in pardoning Jan 6 rioters.
As someone who has analyzed this data (in medical research contexts), it doesn't take much manpower at all to do things like implementing clustering algorithms that pull a good deal of signal out of the data.
Some of the work I did was building scoring functions that measured to what extent someone deviated from their regular routes and routines in space and time, and we used that to try and see if that was a signal that could be used to predict the participants' mood.[1]
"If you’re wondering why Roberts and Kavanaugh would vote one way in one case and flip their votes in another, you’re not alone. Much of the legal and political world is wondering the same thing."
They probably have friends and family members with retirement accounts (no cushy pensions) and would prefer to not give the President the power to nuke the economy by playing stupid games with the Fed. (Lest they have to support their destitute friends and family on those judicial pensions.)
Even temporary uncertainty about the status of the Federal Reserve could spark political upheaval, including confusion about whether the President could immediately remove multiple Governors at will, as well as turmoil in the U. S. and world economies. I would not go down that road. I would not risk destabilizing the U. S. economy just so that we can further mull over an issue that, in various permutations, we have been thinking about for many years.
A return to the spoils system is gonna be terrible for government efficiency.
The only way I can see Congress being able to handle the minutiae of these details is if the House was drastically expanded, allowing for more in-depth oversight. I don't see that happening any time soon...
More in-depth oversight would probably require several decades to complete given all the competing opinions. That might be good barring a crisis requiring immediate action.
Can someone schedule a wellness check for Curtis?
"In a sharp rebuke to President Trump, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the Constitution guarantees automatic birthright citizenship to virtually all children born in the United States."
"Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the court's 6-3 opinion."
"The decision firmly rejected the executive order that Trump issued on the first day of his second term. It sought to bar citizenship for babies born in the U.S. to parents who either entered the country illegally or who are living and working here legally with temporary visas. The executive order never went into effect because every lower court judge who reviewed it concluded, in the words of one judge, that it was 'blatantly unconstitutional.'"
https://www.npr.org/2026/06/30/nx-s1-5839358/birthright-citizenship-decision-scotus-trump
I'm here. If you remember or have a way to back check, you will see that I've previously stated that the President cannot negate a Supreme Court precedent with an executive order. I disagree with the ruling but it's what I expected.
Back to Steve's post. Given today's technology, I think the Supremes were in error in ruling that geofencing requires a warrant because of an expectation privacy regarding cell phone location. In principle it is no different than any other location data - including eyewitnesses, doorbell camera videos offered up by homeowners, street cameras, store cameras, speed cameras and license plate readers.
Part of the issue with the geolocation data - I haven't followed the SCOTUS case or ruling closely enough to say anything about the specifics - is that due to E911 regulations, you cannot turn off location data collection and still receive calls.
I'm not sure where I stand in terms of requesting geodata from public areas (I've built numerous apps and devices that do this kind of tracking), but asking for someone to give up their expectation of privacy just to be able to answer calls on private property seems to be a bit much. The problem is that we do not have great maps that would designate some areas as "ok to track" and others as "respect the occupants' privacy".
In any case, the fact that this data IS available AND queryable really shifts the balance of power between parties seeking to maintain some form of privacy and those seeking to pierce that veil.
(My latest tech experiments have been with off-grid radio technology, where advertising your location is possible, but configurable.[1])
[1] https://corescope.chicagolandmesh.org/#/live
Your technical knowledge and expertise are impressive. I would not know where to begin tracking routines. My introduction to computer stuff was a tour of the Georgia Tech computer center sometime about 1960. The computing hardware filled up an area bigger than a high school basketball gym. My first interaction with a computer was to give my structural analysis professor a number of simultaneous equations intended to describe a structure that was several degrees indeterminant. My memory is not all that clear, but I think he mentioned the computer arriving a solution by iteration. I got a perfect score on that assignment and a B for the course which I could have done much worse on.
I never thought about computers (other than in maintenance of military air defense control systems and crypto systems) again until 1968 when I called on my department's data guys to help compute flood water levels for a lake discharge channel to a major (by Georgia standards) river. I observed their data input, and the subsequent aborted program runs. My only input was that the calculated values exceeded the computer limits and that they should rewrite the data in scientific notation. That worked.
That's a long story to explain how limited computers were before I was 30 years old. And I was in my 40s before I was forced to learn more when my company adopted a PC based data system.
The fun thing now is that I'm getting into radio in a big way as we try to set up this mesh network in Chicago (and I help my little brother set up one in New Mexico). That's more your domain of expertise, if I recall correctly.
(I still need to finish studying for the ham exams and get a proper license!)
I remember from Signal Corps ROTC that continuous wave, CW, provided maximum range for the radios of that time period. The military trained Morse code operators for when that extra range might be needed. One of my very smart roommates (3.98 GPA) was a serious ham radio operator and I became interested. He explained the requirements to me and offered some basic training. We got to Morse code, a requirement at the time, and he told me I would never pass the testing. He was sincere and nice and thanked me for writing some of his papers in non-technical electives so he could date but said he could not get me up to speed.
Is Morse code proficiency still a requirement?
Quick Google check says no, it's not required.
It's a requirement if you want to use the CW bands. I know a few people working on that skill and I hope to join them one of these days.
I think the difference in the latter part is that video of physical objects is different than GPS/telemetry data - and of course a warrant and subpoena is needed in the previous examples with the exception of government-owned devices, excepting where the owners of said devices voluntarily provide the government that data.
I'm not a legal scholar but I feel geofencing is a legitimate way to develop a list of suspects. I suppose that, with a lot of manpower and a great deal of effort, it would be possible to misuse the data. If it's not legitimate police work, the President showed good judgment in pardoning Jan 6 rioters.
https://www.wired.com/story/fbi-google-geofence-warrant-january-6/
As someone who has analyzed this data (in medical research contexts), it doesn't take much manpower at all to do things like implementing clustering algorithms that pull a good deal of signal out of the data.
Some of the work I did was building scoring functions that measured to what extent someone deviated from their regular routes and routines in space and time, and we used that to try and see if that was a signal that could be used to predict the participants' mood.[1]
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26180009/
"If you’re wondering why Roberts and Kavanaugh would vote one way in one case and flip their votes in another, you’re not alone. Much of the legal and political world is wondering the same thing."
They probably have friends and family members with retirement accounts (no cushy pensions) and would prefer to not give the President the power to nuke the economy by playing stupid games with the Fed. (Lest they have to support their destitute friends and family on those judicial pensions.)
It sounds like Kavanaugh said as much:
Even temporary uncertainty about the status of the Federal Reserve could spark political upheaval, including confusion about whether the President could immediately remove multiple Governors at will, as well as turmoil in the U. S. and world economies. I would not go down that road. I would not risk destabilizing the U. S. economy just so that we can further mull over an issue that, in various permutations, we have been thinking about for many years.
A return to the spoils system is gonna be terrible for government efficiency.
The only way I can see Congress being able to handle the minutiae of these details is if the House was drastically expanded, allowing for more in-depth oversight. I don't see that happening any time soon...
It becomes a GREAT argument for WHY we need to expand the House, though.
I was doubtful on that initially, but I hear a lot of respectable people like David French open to the idea.
More in-depth oversight would probably require several decades to complete given all the competing opinions. That might be good barring a crisis requiring immediate action.