Geofence Search Warrants & Tower Dumps

In a truly important book, Geofence Search Warrants & Tower Dumps: How Law Enforcement Gets Them, Trial Techniques For Fighting Them, Morley gathers and analyzes Fourth Amendment cases dealing with these new law enforcement search techniques.

With a geofence search warrant, investigators order Google to tell them every phone and device within a certain building or area (the scene of the crime) at a given time (the time of the crime).  With a tower dump, they order phone companies to tell them every phone close to the scene of the crime when it happened.

These exciting new tools present a clash between a person’s right of privacy under the Fourth Amendment and a practical way for investigators to solve serious crimes.  Some cases have found them constitutional.  Others ruled they violated the Fourth Amendment.

The first geofence search warrant was obtained by law enforcement officers in 2016.  Now Google is responding to 11,0000 such warrants every year.  The most fascinating geofence warrant issued to date was on January 6, 2021, to determine who might be in the Capitol building besides Members of Congress during a tumultuous time in our nation’s history.  It produced a landmark case that may well land in the United States Supreme Court.

Morley has gathered every appellate case involving geofence search warrants and provides a readable, comprehensive and entertaining book on this brand new area of Fourth Amendment law.

He supplies sample forms for law enforcement officers to use when getting geofence or tower dump search warrants, as well as a sample motion to suppress (from an historic case) for defense lawyers to use as a starting point for their own drafting.

“Morley Swingle provides a succinct, even entertaining, summary of Fourth Amendment law as it pertains geofence and tower dump warrants. This authoritative book will speed up the learning curve for any prosecutor, defense lawyer, police officer or judge dealing with one of these cases.”
— Robert H. Dierker, Jr., Missouri Circuit Judge, retired, author Missouri Criminal Practice Handbook

“Morley Swingle’s book on geofence and tower dump search warrants is the best book I’ve seen for police officers who want to understand these new and complex law enforcement tools. He tells you everything you need to know, from how to narrow the geofence area so a geofence warrant will survive a Fourth Amendment challenge, to how to make sure your request for a tower dump is not overbroad. He writes in a style that is both easy to read and even funny at times. I highly recommend this book.”
— Dr. Carl A. Kinnison, Ret. Chief of Police, Cape Girardeau Police Dept., Ret. Director, Southeast Missouri State University Law Enforcement Academy