Yes, the Supreme Court Ruled in Favor of Cell Phone Privacy Today. Here's Why It Doesn't Actually Matter.

(Above: Real footage of liberals celebrating today’s SCOTUS cell phone “win”)

Today, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled 6-3, in Chatrie v. United States, that police need a warrant before they can sweep up your cell phone location data from Google. Liberals and progressives all over my social media feed, Substack notes feed and corporate news media are doing the happy dance, acting like we freedom-and-privacy lovers really just got a win here. I need you to listen to me. We didn’t. We did not get a win. What we got is the illusion of a win, something authoritarians love, because then the “enemy” stops fighting and starts dancing, like idiots.

Let me explain.

The ruling only stops police from forcing a company to hand over your data without a warrant. It says nothing about police buying it without a warrant — and buying it is exactly what they’ve been doing for years, thanks to the kind of nerds who look like they wash their faces with citrus zesters, sweaty monsters like Peter Thiel. There’s an entire industry of data brokers that harvests your location from the apps on your phone and sells it to literally anyone who pays. Your stalker, your abusive ex, the cops. Anyone with cash can find you, any old time they please, without a warrant, and it’s perfectly legal.

The government pays for this data, enormous amounts of money. Your tax money, being used to spy on you through private services that simply don’t care what the constitution says. DHS, the FBI, ICE, the IRS, and the Secret Service have all bought Americans’ location data from brokers like Venntel and Babel Street, no warrant, no judge, no court involved at all. It’s happening right now. And today’s SCOTUS ruling does nothing to combat the rampant privatized surveillance state. It is a lullaby meant to convince you you’re safe, a song sung to a sleepy, trusting baby by the babysitter about to toss the child into the sea.

The scale of privatized surveillance is enormous. DHS signed a contract worth up to $1 billion with Palantir in February to run AI analytics across its agencies. The FBI holds a deal worth up to $27 million for a tracking tool called Locate X. When Senator Ron Wyden asked FBI Director Kash Patel whether he’d stop buying location data without a warrant, Patel refused. The Bureau, he said, “uses all tools.”

The legal excuse is simple and insulting. The government claims the Fourth Amendment only restrains searches it’s forced to justify — and a voluntary purchase isn’t a search, it’s shopping. As one privacy lawyer put it: it’s like the police searching your house without a warrant because they paid your landlord a hundred dollars for the spare key. The intrusion is the same. Only the receipt is different.

That’s the loophole. Fascists and authoritarians love loopholes. Loopholes are a way to screw you over twice, gaslighting at a national scale. In the hands of an administration that has treated court orders as suggestions and constitutional limits as paperwork to shred, it’s big enough to drive the whole Constitution through in a monster truck. A ruling that asks police to get a warrant for the front door means nothing when the side door is unlocked, the government holds a billion-dollar key, and the people in power have made clear they’ll use every entrance they can find.

This is why the celebration from liberal and progressive pundits today is annoyingly, depressingly naive. The surveillance machine isn’t really about warrants and judges anymore. It’s very Grandma of you to think it is. Surveillance, like news, is now a capitalist marketplace — private contractors, commercial incentives, money moving between Silicon Valley and federal agencies no matter who’s in office. You can win every warrant fight in the country and still live in a nation where the state knows every place you’ve been, every clinic you’ve visited, every protest you’ve joined, because it bought the record from a company that lifted it off your phone while you were scrolling TikTok.

The fix can’t come from this Court or this White House. It has to come from Congress. The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act — which would bar agencies from buying data they’d otherwise need a warrant to get — passed the House in 2024 with bipartisan support. But — and with these creeps there’s always a but — the Senate let it die without a vote. A new version is floating around this year, with about the odds you’d expect against a billion-dollar surveillance economy whose Nerd Kings are helping the flabby orange dimwit build himself a ballroom.

So take Monday’s ruling for what it is: narrow, sincere, and far less than it’s being sold as. The Court didn’t even resolve Chatrie’s own case — it kicked it back to a lower court. Meanwhile the brokers keep selling your data, the agencies keep buying it with your own money, and an administration that has never once let the law slow it down keeps right on driving the nation into the fucking ground.

They’re not coming for your privacy. They already took it.

Today’s SCOTUS ruling changes nothing. And if you’re celebrating it as a win, you’re really just knitting your own noose.

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