10-minute read | 2,100 words
What to know this week
The Supreme Court listens to arguments on geofence warrants.
The Supreme Court began to hear arguments on the constitutionality of geofence searches, which allow law enforcement to find suspects using location data.
Brazil launches probe into Google’s content compensation practices.
A Brazilian watchdog has launched a new investigation into Google’s use of content for artificial intelligence (AI) without appropriately compensating publishers.
This week's full stories
Geofence Supreme Court case kicks off.
THE NEWS
On Monday, the Supreme Court began to hear arguments regarding the constitutionality of geofence searches. Currently, geofencing involves the government drawing a virtual area around where a crime has been committed and subsequently seeking a warrant for technology companies to identify if any of its users were within the area at the time of the crime.
For context, this case ties back to a robbery of a Federal Credit Union in Richmond, Virginia, where a robber stole $195,000 from a bank vault and fled before police could arrive. After being unable to find any leads, officers used a geofence warrant which led them to identify and arrest Okello T. Chatrie.
Chatrie is challenging the constitutionality of these searches arguing that technological advancements have made it easier for police to collect vast amounts of data on a person. Specifically Chatrie is arguing that geofencing violates the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches.
Throughout the opening arguments, the Justices do seem split on the Constitutionality of geofencing. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch and Justice Sonia Sotomayor expressed concerns with the government’s ability to access location data and how that could apply to other forms of data, such as emails, photos, and documents. Whereas Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Brett M. Kavanaugh seemed most worried about disrupting the work of law enforcement.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Amy Coney Barrett posed difficult questions to both sides of the case.
Adam G. Unikowsky, the plaintiff’s lawyer, wrote in a court filing:
“The technology may be novel, but the constitutional problem it presents is not. The potential for abuse is breathtaking: The government need only draw a geofence around a church, a political rally, or a gun shop, and it can compel a search of every user’s records to learn who was there.”
Unikowsky argued that a person’s location history is private data and that even if a person has agreed to share it with a company, like Google, that does not mean they have agreed to share it with the government.
THE KNOWLEDGE
Over the past decade, geofencing among other law enforcement techniques has become highly controversial due to its reliance on using people’s data without their consent and the potential door that it opens to much more egregious invasions of privacy.
Previously, the Supreme Court had heard another case involving the fourth amendment and how technology impacts these rights. In Carpenter v. United States, the justices weighed in on the legality of law enforcement utilizing cell tower location information.
In the 2018 case, law enforcement obtained cell-site location information from Carpenter’s wireless carrier to track his movement and eventually led to his arrest. Eventually, the case made its way to the Supreme Court, where the justices ruled in a 5-4 decision that the government needed to obtain a warrant supported by probable cause.
A key aspect of the case involved significantly limiting the scope of the third-party doctrine, which holds that people lose privacy protections when they voluntarily share their data and information with companies. However, in this case, the justices reduced the doctrines interpretation by ruling that people are not voluntarily sharing this data by merely carrying a mobile device.
While the make-up of the Supreme Court has changed significantly since 2018, the similarities between the two cases are striking.
THE IMPACT
Once the Supreme Court rules, their decision could reshape how law enforcement uses digital location data in investigations. Unlike traditional warrants, which are designed to search known targets, geofencing begins by collecting information on everyone in a given area and then narrowing the scope later.
If the Court rules against geofencing, the immediate impact would be substantial. Police departments would not only lose a valuable tool but would also be forced to rely more on traditional surveillance tools that are both slower and less precise. Additionally, restricting geofencing would also represent a significant privacy victory by reinforcing the concept that location data is both sensitive and cannot be treated like ordinary business records.
On the other hand if the Court sides with law enforcement, it would make a major expansion of digital surveillance capabilities. A favorable ruling would not only normalize these warrants but could also be used as precedent to extend to other datasets collected at scale, such as Wi-Fi logs, smart device metadata, or other similar data.
This ruling will serve as a major signal of whether the Court intends to extend Carpenter’s privacy logic into the modern era of mass data collection or whether it will allow new surveillance techniques to expand faster than Fourth Amendment protection can adapt.
Brazil opens probe into Google.
THE NEWS
On Friday, the Conselho Administrativo de Defesa Economica (CADE), a Brazilian competition watchdog, opened a formal investigation into Google's pay practices. More specifically, the organization is investigating if Google used content published by third parties to generate its AI overviews without adequately compensating the publishers.
With this investigation, CADE will consider whether or not Google scraped journalistic content to help create its “AI Overviews” and if it was an anti-competitive practice. Additionally, CADE is looking to consider if outlets that opted-out of Google’s AI Overviews are being penalized through less visibility.
Samira de Castro, President of the National Journalism Federation, commented on the matter stating:
“This has a direct impact on informative pluralism, because it affects mainly smaller, regional, and independent outlets that are fundamental for the diversity of voices in the public debate. And it also affects the quality of information, because it enfeebels the economic model behind professional journalism.”
Stell Caram Abduch, head of Legal at Foxglove, a group that is heavily involved in this case, echoed these sentiments, stating:
“It is not only an antitrust matter, it is affecting journalism, it is affecting access and it’s affecting democracy, and this has enormous weight.”
Brazil now joins the United Kingdom (UK) and European Union (EU) among others investigating Google’s impacts on publishers.
THE KNOWLEDGE
While many of these proceedings are still underway, this shift demonstrates that nations are concerned with how these companies are operating. For Brazil’s case, this investigation was initially submitted to CADE in 2019, but was later dismissed in late 2024. However, in March 2025 the case was resubmitted and eventually passed to the General Superintendency of CADE in June 2025 by Commissioner Diogo Thomson de Andrade.
When casting his vote, Commissioner Thomson noted that they needed to “increase the openness of competition policy to the involvement of civil society and of actors who, although not directly competing in the market under scrutiny, represent diffuse interests and perceive, with particular sensitivity, the social, economic, and informational effects of any abuse of economic power.”
For the EU’s December 2025 investigation, the European Commission announced that it was probing whether or not Google had breached the regional bloc’s competition rules. Similar to Brazil’s investigation, the EU is investigating Google’s AI Overviews and how it generated content by scraping published articles without appropriate compensation.
Teresa Ribera, the EU’s Competition Commissioner commented on the investigation, emphasizing:
“AI is bringing remarkable innovation and many benefits for people,...but this progress cannot come at the expense of the principles at the heart of our societies.”
Notably this was not the first time the EU was looking to target Google over antitrust concerns. In September 2025, the EU fined Google nearly three billion euros for breaching antitrust rules by distorting competition in the advertising technology industry.
In the UK’s lawsuit, the nation’s competition watchdog, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), announced that it was also investigating Google’s AI Overviews and their impacts on publishers. In this case, the UK proposed allowing publishers to be able to opt out of their content being used in Google’s products without impacting their appearance rates in search engine results.
In response to this proposal, Google announced that it was already “exploring updates to our controls to let sites specifically opt out of search generative AI features.”
Regardless of the outcomes, these three investigations represent a growing pressure on AI companies and how they ingest content, oftentimes, scraping published content without adequate compensation.
THE IMPACT
While many of these nations are debating whether or not to crack down on Google’s AI practices, these investigations signal a shifting trend where governments are increasingly willing to treat AI-generated summaries as a competition and market-power issue, not just a copyright dispute. If CADE determines that Google used publisher content to strengthen its AI Overviews without compensation, it would reinforce a growing regulatory argument that AI products are not neutral improvements but rather tools that extract value from existing industries while simultaneously undermining the business models that fuel them.
If CADE, the EU, and the UK all enforce new regulatory standards, the consequences could extend beyond Google Search features. New requirements around transparency, opt-outs, or compensation could reshape how large AI firms train models and deliver AI-generated outputs to users. Over time, this could force AI companies towards licensing-based ecosystems, similar to how streaming transformed the music industry.
This development is not just a debate over Google Search features. Rather it is an early test of whether journalism remains economically viable in an AI-driven information economy, and whether the public will access news through reporting or AI intermediaries.
This Week's Caveat Podcast: All rise for the Chatrie.
Dave Bittner and Ben Yelin sit down with N2K’s Lead Analyst, Ethan Cook, to discuss the Supreme Court beginning to hear arguments on geofencing. Throughout the conversation, the three look at the various opinions of the Court’s justices and what the fallouts could be depending on the opinion the court will eventually issue.
OTHER NOTEWORTHY STORIES
State Department issues warning about DeepSeek.
What: The State Department has issued a global push and alert regarding Chinese AI firm, DeepSeek.
Why: On Friday, the State Department issued a global order to bring attention to how Chinese AI firms are allegedly stealing intellectual property from other AI labs. Specifically, the order noted that the US government had “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.”
China has responded to the allegations, stating:
“The allegations that Chinese entities are stealing American AI intellectual property are groundless and are deliberate attacks on China’s development and progress in the AI industry.”
In the order, the State Department highlighted three specific companies of concern including DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax.
APR 24, 2026 | Source: Reuters
Maine governor vetoes data center bill.
What: Governor Janet Mills vetoed a bill that would have established a moratorium on data centers in the state.
Why: On Friday, Maine’s Governor Mills vetoed a bill which would have established the nation’s first statewide moratorium on new data centers. If passed, the moratorium would have prevented the construction of any new centers until November 2027.
With this veto, Governor Mills stated that while she supports the idea of the moratorium, she could not sign off on this specific bill as it did not include an exemption for a data center project that aims to kick off in Jay, a town in the southern part of the state that has experienced significant economic hardship.
Governor Mills wrote:
“After prior redevelopment efforts failed, the Town of Jay worked for two years on a $550 million data center redevelopment project to finally bring jobs and investment back to the mill site.”
APR 24, 2026 | Source: Politico
China orders Meta to unwind Manus acquisition.
What: China has ordered Meta to undo its over $2 billion acquisition of AI startup, Manus.
Why: On Monday, China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) ordered Meta to undo its major acquisition of AI startup, Manus. This move is a part of China’s larger effort to increase their scrutiny of US investments in Chinese companies involved in emerging technologies.
NDRC announced this demand alongside stating that it would "prohibit foreign investment in Manus in accordance with laws and regulations, and require the parties involved to withdraw the acquisition transaction.”
In response to this demand, Meta stated:
“The transaction complied fully with applicable law. We anticipate an appropriate resolution to the inquiry.”
APR 27, 2026 | Source: Reuters