Can Police Tap Your Phone or Track Your Location in Minnesota?

What counts as “electronic surveillance” in Minnesota?

Electronic surveillance is a broad term for the different ways the government (or a private person) can secretly monitor you. Minnesota law, like federal law, breaks it into a few categories:

• Wiretapping — intercepting a phone call or other “wire” communication while it is happening.
• Bugging — using a hidden microphone, recorder, or transmitter to capture an in-person (“oral”) conversation.
• Electronic communication interception — capturing emails, texts, or other data in transit.
• Location tracking — using GPS, cell-site data, or app location history to follow where a person or device goes.

Minnesota’s main surveillance statute is the Privacy of Communications Act (Minnesota Statutes Chapter 626A). It is closely modeled on the federal wiretap law (Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act), so federal and Minnesota rules often line up — but Minnesota courts can and sometimes do give people more protection under the Minnesota Constitution than the U.S. Constitution requires.

What this means for you: “Surveillance” is not just a phone tap. Recording, bugging, and phone-location tracking are all covered, and each has its own rules. If any of these produced evidence against you, it is worth having a lawyer examine whether it was done legally.

Can you legally record a conversation in Minnesota?

Yes — if you are part of the conversation. Minnesota is a one-party consent state under Minnesota Statutes Section 626A.02. That means you can record a phone call or an in-person conversation as long as you are a participant, or as long as at least one person in the conversation has agreed to the recording. You do not have to tell the other person.

There is one important catch. The recording becomes illegal if you make it for a criminal or tortious purpose — for example, to blackmail, defraud, or harass someone. Recording a call just to keep an accurate record of what was said is fine; recording it to commit a crime is not.

If you are not part of the conversation and no participant has consented, recording it is illegal interception. Penalties under Section 626A.02 can reach up to five years in prison and a $20,000 fine, plus civil liability to the person whose privacy was invaded.

What this means for you: You generally can record your own calls and conversations in Minnesota. You generally cannot secretly record a conversation between other people. The 2024 Minnesota Consumer Data Privacy Act did not change this one-party rule for individuals recording their own conversations.

When do police need a wiretap warrant in Minnesota?

For police, the rules are much stricter than for private citizens. To intercept your calls or bug a private conversation, Minnesota law requires a court order (a wiretap warrant) based on probable cause. The key procedural protections come from Sections 626A.05 and 626A.06:

• Who can ask: Only the Minnesota Attorney General or a county attorney (or one specifically designated assistant) may apply. A regular police officer cannot, and a court commissioner cannot issue the warrant.
• Which judge: The application goes to a district court, Court of Appeals, or Supreme Court judge.
• What the judge must find: Probable cause that (1) a person is committing, has committed, or is about to commit a listed offense; (2) specific communications about that offense will be intercepted; (3) normal investigative methods have failed, are unlikely to work, or are too dangerous; and (4) the phone or place to be tapped is connected to the offense.
• Time limits: An order can last up to 30 days, with extensions only on a fresh showing of probable cause.
• Minimization: Officers must make a real effort to avoid capturing conversations that fall outside the warrant.

What crimes allow a wiretap?

A wiretap warrant can only be issued to investigate certain serious offenses listed in Section 626A.05. These include murder, manslaughter, the assault degrees, aggravated robbery, carjacking in the first or second degree (added by the Legislature in 2023), kidnapping, criminal sexual conduct in the first through third degrees, certain theft and forgery crimes, gambling, and controlled-substance offenses, among others.

What this means for you: A lawful police wiretap in Minnesota is a high bar. If your case involves intercepted calls or a bug, a defense attorney will check whether the right official applied, whether the judge made all four required findings, whether the offense qualified, and whether officers minimized properly. A failure on any of these can be a basis to challenge the evidence.

Can police track your phone’s location in Minnesota?

Generally not without a warrant. Two separate rules apply — one federal, one Minnesota.

On the federal side, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Carpenter v. United States (2018) that getting your historical cell-site location information — the records showing which cell towers your phone connected to over time — is a Fourth Amendment search. Police generally need a warrant supported by probable cause to obtain it. The Court treated detailed location history as too revealing to fall under the old rule that information shared with a company loses its privacy protection.

On the Minnesota side, the Legislature passed a location-tracking warrant law (Sections 626A.41 and 626A.42, enacted in 2014 and expanded in 2020). It says a government entity generally may not obtain the location information of an electronic device without a tracking warrant issued on probable cause. A tracking warrant can authorize collection for up to 60 days. There are limited exceptions — for example, when a device is reported lost or stolen, in a genuine emergency involving risk of death or serious harm, or with the owner’s documented consent.

Physical tracking devices are covered too. In United States v. Jones (2012), the Supreme Court held that attaching a GPS tracker to a vehicle to monitor its movements is a search, because placing the device is a trespass on your property done to gather information.

What this means for you: Whether police used cell-tower records, a GPS unit, or app location data, there is a strong argument in Minnesota that they needed a warrant first. If they did not get one, the location evidence may be challengeable.

What about Google location data and “geofence” warrants?

A geofence warrant is a newer tool. Instead of naming a suspect, police draw a box around a location and time and ask a company — almost always Google — to hand over data on every device that was inside that box. This sweeps in innocent people who happened to be nearby.

In State v. Contreras-Sanchez, decided April 15, 2026, the Minnesota Supreme Court addressed geofence warrants for the first time. The court held that:

• Cell phone users have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the location data Google stores about them, so accessing it is a search under Article I, Section 10 of the Minnesota Constitution.
• Geofence warrants are not automatically unconstitutional — they can be valid if done correctly.
• The specific warrant in that case was not particular enough because it gave police unchecked discretion over which devices to identify. The court reversed a second-degree murder conviction and sent the case back.

This area of law is moving fast. The U.S. Supreme Court is currently deciding the same issue in Chatrie v. United States (No. 25-112), which was argued on April 27, 2026, with a decision expected by the end of June 2026. That ruling could reshape the federal rules on geofence warrants, so anyone facing this kind of evidence should expect the law to keep developing.

What this means for you: If police identified you through Google location data or a geofence warrant, Minnesota now recognizes a privacy interest in that data, and the warrant must meet strict standards. This is an active, unsettled area — exactly the kind of issue where a careful challenge can matter.

What is the difference between your conversations and your “metadata”?

Minnesota law treats the content of your communications differently from the records about them.

• Substantive (content) information — what you actually said, wrote, or sent. This gets the strongest protection and generally requires a warrant.
• Transactional (metadata) information — things like the phone numbers you dialed or that called you. A device that captures dialed numbers is a pen register; one that captures incoming numbers is a trap and trace device (Sections 626A.36–626A.37).

For pen registers and trap-and-trace orders, the legal standard is lower: police generally only have to show the information is relevant to an ongoing investigation, not full probable cause. In State v. Fakler (1993), the Minnesota Supreme Court held that installing a pen register is not a “search,” so the suppression rule does not apply to pen-register evidence the same way it applies to wiretaps.

What this means for you: Police can sometimes get a record of who you called more easily than a recording of what you said. But after Carpenter, detailed location data is treated more like protected content than like simple metadata.

What happens to illegally obtained surveillance evidence?

If the government intercepts your communications illegally, Minnesota law says the contents — and evidence derived from them — generally cannot be used against you in court. You raise this through a motion to suppress.

That said, not every mistake leads to suppression. In State v. Quinn (1989), the Minnesota Supreme Court held that a minor, technical defect in a wiretap order — one that did not frustrate the statute’s purpose or prejudice the defendant — did not require throwing out the evidence. The key questions are whether the violation was serious and whether it actually harmed you.

What this means for you: A flaw in how surveillance was authorized or carried out can sometimes get the evidence excluded, which may significantly weaken the prosecution’s case. Whether a particular defect qualifies is a fact-specific legal question for your attorney.

What should you do if you think you’re being watched or recorded?

As general guidance — not legal advice for any specific situation:

• Assume your calls and texts could be monitored if you are under investigation, and avoid discussing your case on the phone or online.
• Do not consent to searches of your phone, car, or accounts. You can politely decline.
• Do not try to destroy devices or data. That can create new criminal exposure for obstruction or evidence tampering.
• Write down what you remember — dates, officers, what was said — and save it for your lawyer.
• Talk to a Minnesota criminal defense attorney early. Surveillance challenges often turn on warrant paperwork that a lawyer needs to review line by line.

What this means for you: The most powerful thing you can do is stay quiet about the case and get experienced legal help. A lawyer can demand and scrutinize the surveillance records before the evidence is ever used at trial.

Talk to a Minnesota criminal defense lawyer

Surveillance cases — wiretaps, bugs, GPS, cell-site data, and geofence warrants — are technical and fast-changing. If you believe you were recorded, tapped, or tracked, or you are under investigation in Chanhassen or anywhere in Minnesota, Keil Defense can review how the evidence was gathered and whether it can be challenged. Call (651) 315-3097 for a confidential consultation.