As crime-solving goes hi-tech, public defenders scramble to keep up

National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers helps public defenders navigate new technologies used against their clients

The first time Caleb Kenyon, a defense attorney in Florida, saw a geofence warrant was when a new client received an alarming email from Google in January 2020. Local police were requesting personal data from the client, Zachary McCoy, and Kenyon had just seven days to stop Google from turning it over, the email said.

When Kenyon asked Google for more information, he received a copy of the warrant's cover letter. It was unlike anything he or other lawyers in his network had ever seen.