Just a few weeks ago, the Supreme Court reminded the country that our digital privacy is just as important and protected as it is off our screens. Through the decision in Chatrie vs. United States, the justices ruled that your phone’s location data is protected by the Fourth Amendment and that law enforcement must obtain a warrant before conducting “geofence” searches of location history. The decision was celebrated by civil rights groups nationwide because it brought new clarity to an increasingly gray area of law.
Unfortunately, while the Supreme Court sets precedent that protects our digital privacy rights, Albany is moving in the wrong direction. A bill heading toward the governor’s desk, A8022, would require social media platforms to comply with law-enforcement search warrants within 72 hours. That aggressive clock leaves companies almost no room to push back against over-reaching warrants.
This follows a grand jury subpoena from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of Texas that requested personal information on New York patients and providers involved in gender-affirming care — another direct attack on the civil rights and right to privacy we all deserve.
To be clear, the motivations behind the New York bill are understandable. The effort grew out of the death of a 16-year-old Washington State teen who unknowingly bought fentanyl-laced pills through Snapchat, which then took weeks to respond to a warrant. No family should be forced to wait that long for answers, and legitimate investigations shouldn’t be stalled. But Albany’s remedy is not the answer.
The bill’s central fault is its core assumption that law enforcement always acts in the public interest, but for immigrants, LGBTQ people, and other marginalized communities, that has never been a safe assumption. Digital warrants can and do get abused through overly broad filings that fish for more data than a case requires, which is why platforms routinely challenge them.
Those challenges are not an obstruction, but a check on overreach. A 72-hour deadline dramatically limits the ability to challenge these warrants and effectively hands a skeleton key to law enforcement, which the bill defines broadly and carves out no exception for federal agencies. It also ignores joint state-federal investigations as a warrant executed by state officers can quickly put a person’s data in federal hands.
Our concern is that we already know how law enforcement agencies can behave when they want Americans’ data. Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security sent hundreds of subpoenas to major platforms, demanding the identities behind anonymous accounts that posted about ICE activity.
Another fear is the precedent this bill sets. A bill signed in New York that follows in the path of other states like Colorado sets a powerful model for the rest of the country, and potentially even the federal government to follow. But that game of legislative telephone risks even tighter timelines and more lax protections down the line — potentially building a legal foundation for it to be used to target protesters, people seeking reproductive care, or anyone else it decides it wants.
One can appreciate what New York’s lawmakers were trying to do, but state law should not contribute to or serve as a precedent for federal surveillance infrastructure. Just weeks after the Supreme Court acted, Gov. Hochul should weigh this bill’s longer-term impact and refuse to sign it without amendments that rein in its potential for abuse.
Babine is executive director at Equality New York, a grassroots advocacy organization that advances the lives of all LGBTQ New Yorkers and their families.