Privacy on the Map (Part 2): Progress, Pitfalls, and the Fight for Enforceable Location Data Protections

The journey towards comprehensive location privacy laws continues to unfold, with recent legislation enacted in Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, Oregon, and Virginia. These states have tackled the critical issue of safeguarding individuals from pervasive location surveillance, though gaps remain that must be addressed. The fight for enforceable location data protections extends beyond state borders to Congress, ensuring comprehensive safeguards for all citizens.

Location privacy holds immense importance, especially when considering the chilling reality of geofence warrants. Law enforcement agencies can map anyone present within a specific area, essentially turning innocent bystanders into potential suspects. This invasive surveillance technique, recently examined by the U.S. Supreme Court in Chatrie v.

United States, poses a significant threat to constitutional protections. The Court ruled that accessing location data via geofencing constitutes a Fourth Amendment search, mandating constitutional safeguards. However, the battle against commercial location surveillance extends beyond law enforcement, as data brokers operate in a largely unregulated market, gathering, aggregating, and selling physical location data to anyone with a credit card, including government agencies.

The consequences of this unregulated market are far-reaching. For instance, an anti-LGBTQ+ advocacy group purchased app location data to track priests across multiple dioceses and outed an individual after acquiring his Grindr location signals. Privacy advocates used Locate X, a location-tracking tool, to demonstrate how it tracked a device's movements from a state with abortion bans to an abortion clinic in another state, illustrating the potential misuse of this data.

Additionally, data brokers like Near Intelligence have sold precise location data of reproductive health clinic visitors to political groups, showcasing the weaponization of location tracking against political protesters. The unregulated sharing of location data has created a lucrative pipeline for data brokers to capture and monetize our movements, often without our knowledge or consent.

To address these concerns, six essential core principles have been identified as fundamental components of meaningful location privacy laws. These include strong definitions, clear rules, protection of all precise geolocation data as sensitive, empowerment of consumers through a robust private right of action, prohibition of "pay-for-privacy" schemes, and transparency through clear privacy policies.

While legislative efforts in California, Illinois, and Massachusetts are still pending, the states of Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, Oregon, and Virginia have taken significant steps in the right direction. These states have banned the sale of precise geolocation data and adopted an all-locations protection policy, setting them apart from California's A.B.

45 of 2025, which only restricts location tracking within a 1,850-foot radius of family planning centers. The progress made in these states provides a blueprint for other jurisdictions and Congress to follow, ensuring the protection of individuals' location privacy in an increasingly digital world.