Google is giving data to police based on search keywords, court docs show

[steven36]

Court records in an arson case show that Google gave away data on people who searched for a specific address.

 

 

There are few things as revealing as a person's search history, and police typically need a warrant on a known suspect to demand that sensitive information. But a recently unsealed court document found that investigators can request such data in reverse order by asking Google to disclose everyone who searched a keyword rather than for information on a known suspect.

 

In August, police arrested Michael Williams, an associate of singer and accused sex offender R. Kelly, for allegedly setting fire to a witness' car in Florida. Investigators linked Williams to the arson, as well as witness tampering, after sending a search warrant to Google that requested information on "users who had searched the address of the residence close in time to the arson."  

 

The July court filing was unsealed on Tuesday. Detroit News reporter Robert Snell tweeted about the filing after it was unsealed.

 

Court documents showed that Google provided the IP addresses of people who searched for the arson victim's address, which investigators tied to a phone number belonging to Williams. Police then used the phone number records to pinpoint the location of Williams' device near the arson, according to court documents. 

 

The original warrant sent to Google is still sealed, but the report provides another example of a growing trend of data requests to the search engine giant in which investigators demand data on a large group of users rather than a specific request on a single suspect. 

 

"This 'keyword warrant' evades the Fourth Amendment checks on police surveillance," said Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. "When a court authorizes a data dump of every person who searched for a specific term or address, it's likely unconstitutional."

 

The keyword warrants are similar to geofence warrants, in which police make requests to Google for data on all devices logged in at a specific area and time. Google received 15 times more geofence warrant requests in 2018 compared with 2017, and five times more in 2019 than 2018. The rise in reverse requests from police have troubled Google staffers, according to internal emails. 

 

Google declined to disclose how many keyword warrants it's received in the last three years. 

 

Reverse search warrants like geofence warrants are being challenged across the US for violating civil rights. Lawmakers in New York have proposed legislation to make these searches illegal, while in Illinois, a federal judge found that the practice violated the Fourth Amendment. 

 

Keyword warrants aren't new. In 2017, Minnesota police sent a keyword warrant to Google for information including name, address, telephone number, Social Security numbers and IP addresses related to people who searched for a "Douglas [REDACTED]" in a fraud investigation. 

 

Todd Spodek, the attorney representing Williams, said he plans to challenge the legality of the keyword warrant issued in June. He hasn't seen the document yet but said he intends to argue that it violated Williams' rights. 

 

Spodek said he's seen more of these types of warrants being issued in criminal investigations and worries it could lead to wrongful accusations in the future. 

 

"Think of the ramifications in the future if everyone who searched something in the privacy of their own home was subject to interviews by federal agents," Spodek said. "Someone could be interested in how people die a certain way or how drug deals are done, and it could be misconstrued or used improperly."

 

Source

[Nuclear Fallout]

Beautiful NEW WORLD.

 

ISN'T IT????

 

= T H O U G H T   P O L I C E

[steven36]

44 minutes ago, Nuclear Fallout said:

Beautiful NEW WORLD.

It's not new  i been posting  about it  for Years  they been doing for years in the USA this  just confirms  it in a court  law .💀

 

What is kind of  new the Cloud ACT passed in 2018  is they can even get  peoples  data  that stored overseas  because M$ lost  in court . that why Germany ban  M$  office 365 and Google DOCs  in schools and  German data protection watchdog has warned against the use of US based Amazon Web Services for storing sensitive data for the federal police.

https://www.businessworld.ie/technology-news/Google-pushes-framework-for-law-enforcement-access-to-overseas-data-568689.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act

 

Google sells data to  the police

 

Quote

The company is levying fees of $45 for a subpoena, $60 for a wiretap, and $245 for a search warrant

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/technology/google-search-warrants-legal-fees.html

 

 

Big Tech is  Surveillance  Capitalism  they profit off your data