“Too often courts pass the buck in cases involving novel surveillance techniques, leading to situations where police can continue using the technique for years or even decades without a definitive ruling.”
Police found two bodies beside a rural California highway and asked for every phone on that stretch of road. They got nearly 1,700. The district court called the tower dump an unconstitutional general warrant, then let the evidence in anyway under the good faith doctrine. That is the whole trick. The search is illegal, nothing happens, and police run the same play next week.