2023 WLIA Conference Workshop
Workshop 3 – Legal Issues in GIS
Presenter: Chris Dunn, GeoVelo Geospatial Forensics
Where: Kalahari Resort, 1305 Kalahari Drive Baraboo, WI 53913 United States – Marula Room
When: Wednesday, February 22, 2023 8:00 AM (CST) to 11:30 (CST
Hour 1: Geospatial Case Law: With a special focus on YOUR personal legal liability, copyrights, contracts, open records, and more.
Hour 2: The Many Ways Geospatial People End Up in Court: 1) Making embarrassing mistakes; 2) You are the GeoExpert; 3) You made the geospatial demonstratives for court; and over twelve more ways.
Hour 3: Geofence Warrants (an emerging legal issue): Geofence warrants have proven to be an effective tool to help prosecutors and police make their case, often when no other evidence leads to a suspect. They are the latest intersection between the geospatial profession and law enforcement. In some jurisdictions prosecutors petition judges to authorize warrants which scrutinize one or more national location databases, containing location records of every citizen in the US with a smartphone. Many legal scholars say it’s the details of how those data are obtained from the warrant, selected, processed, and then presented in court which may, or may not, offend long-established Constitutional protections found under the 4th and 5th Amendments. We’ll avoid politics in this session and focus on how a Geofence Warrant might affect you professionally.
Q&A: I love questions and you can ask them at any time during our session. So, please bring your questions to the conference or email them ahead of time to Chris (.) Dunn @ Geo Velo (.) com
The Obligatory Legal Disclaimers
Public Sector Disclaimer: If you work for a public sector employer your organization* already has an attorney. If what you hear or learn today differs from what your attorney says – he or she is correct, and I am wrong. *This attorney is not at all concerned with protecting your personal legal interests.
Private Sector Disclaimer: The Missouri rules of professional conduct require us to remind you that; the choice of a lawyer is an important decision and should not be based solely upon advertisements. And I don’t want to be your attorney.
Take a Smarter Approach to Attacking Your Client’s Geofence Warrant
It doesn’t matter to your client whether geofence warrants are Constitutional. Your client doesn’t have the wherewithal to take that fight to the US Supreme Court. So, consider attacking the structure of the geofence warrant. A geofence warrant is like any piece of forensic evidence. The people that analyzed the data dump made assumptions. Where those assumptions the best practice or where they made to convenience the prosecution?
Explore these topics:
- Geofence Warrants by the numbers (Below)
- What is a Geofence Warrant?
- Geofence Warrants in the Media
- Geofence Warrant Case Law
- Disassembling the Geofence Warrant Process
- The Geospatial Forensics Approach
- Geofence Warrant Constitutionality
- Geofence Warrant Resources
Geofence Warrants by the Numbers
Source: https://trends.google.com/trends/?geo=US
