Were the members of Calvary Chapel truly being tracked by the state? If so, a dangerous precedent has been set. We need truth and justice!

From CBN. A San Jose, California church still locked in a years-long legal battle with Santa Clara County officials over $1.2 million in fines for violating COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, alleges the county government conducted unconstitutional surveillance and tracked its members on the church’s property using their cell phones.

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The federal lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, on behalf of Calvary Chapel and its Pastor Mike McClure by attorneys with the nonprofit Advocates for Faith and Freedom claims the county and Denver-based data company SafeGraph “embarked on an invasive and warrantless geofencing operation to track residents in the County.” …

The complaint alleges the county and the company violated the Fourth Amendment protecting individuals’ privacy, as well as the free exercise and establishment clauses of the First Amendment. …

“Geofencing is a location-based tool used by the government to track individuals through their cell phone data. This tool is generally used in police investigations of criminal activity and requires the government to obtain a warrant which is limited by time and scope,” according to court documents. …

“At the behest of the County, SafeGraph put two geofences around CCSJ and surveilled the churchgoers within the church premises for over a year during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the lawsuit said. …

“Tracking congregants in and out of church is something we would expect in China. The fact that county officials would use these tactics should be a wakeup call to every American who values their own freedom to worship, speak, or attend gatherings of any ideological nature,” Robert Tyler, president of Advocates for Faith and Freedom said in a statement to CBN News. …

CBN News reached out to the Santa Clara County Counsel’s Office and to SafeGraph for comment. The county replied saying, “The allegations in the complaint are false and we are confident the County will prevail in court. To be clear, the County did not use cell phone surveillance to track anyone at Calvary Chapel during the pandemic. The allegations take out of context analysis of third-party, commercially available aggregate data that was used to respond to Calvary’s own allegations in a lawsuit that Calvary itself filed.” …

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(Excerpt from CBN. Photo Credit: Aaron Burden on Unsplash)