Don’t Want To Be Part Of A Geofence Warrant Line-Up? You Have Options.
Google is an internet powerhouse. It’s home to the most-used search engine in the world. It has its own operating system and its own line of cell phones. It also has its own cell phone service. It has ad services, a suite of web-based productivity apps that are (somewhat compatible) with a bunch of Microsoft software, an app store, and a considerable amount of consumer loyalty.
To keep all of this running by keeping all of this profitable (although it’s the ads that actually make the money), Google gathers a ton of data from its users, both implicitly and explicitly.
Google’s desire for data has generated its fair share of legal action and legal threats, ranging from users who think they’ve been wronged to the Department of Justice itself, which believes Google is violating anti-trust laws with its products and services.
That’s why Google has become the go-to source for data cops want to obtain. These requests tend to be the first move in criminal investigations with no readily apparent suspect. Cops send warrants to Google for information on anyone using certain search terms in any certain area — something often referred to as a “keyword” warrant.
Far more common are geofence warrants. A crime occurs and cops send a warrant to Google asking for information on any devices in the area of the crime. From that long list of partial identifiers, investigators hope to find a list of suspects worth pursuing.
The problems with geofence warrants are several. First, most courts aren’t really paying attention to the warrant affidavits, allowing cops to seek whatever information they desire under the theory there’s probable cause to believe Google holds the data requested.
Inattentive judges (or those being actively misled by cops) won’t ask for more details about the area covered by the geofence or the odds that such a request (especially when covering a heavily trafficked or heavily populated area) would necessitate Google searching (on the government’s behalf) all of its users’ data for these particular coordinates.
The government is in the business of obtaining data haystacks from Google and demanding it be trusted to sift through the data without rounding up the unusual suspects — innocent people who just happened to be in the area of criminal activity.
That’s simply not good enough in some cases, which has resulted in judicial pushback on these broad requests. These rebuttals from judges make it clear the government needs more than the broad assumption Google might house the data requested.
Popular with cops. Probably shouldn’t be popular with anyone else. While most people might understand they’ve agreed to share location data with Google, that’s not the same thing as agreeing to share it with the government. And, given Google’s history with location data gathering, there’s a good chance some users may have assumed they never gave Google consent to collect this data.
But you don’t have to be part of this virtual lineup. Tools and options are available for users of Google services, a list of people that likely includes a vast majority of internet users.
Shira Ovide’s article for the Washington Post first details everything that’s extremely questionable about law enforcement’s reliance on geofence warrants.
In a typical search warrant, police have a suspect in mind and ask for a judge’s approval to search their home, phone data and other potential evidence. Legal experts are generally fine with those targeted warrants to Google.
In the large-scale search term and location warrants, police know a crime occurred but don’t know who might have committed it.
They come up with what could be potential evidence — the location near a crime or a search term like “pipe bomb” — and ask a judge to order Google to provide information on people who match those criteria.
“That’s not the way criminal investigations are supposed to go,” said Jumana Musa, director of the Fourth Amendment Center of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
That’s correct. Warrants are supposed to be particular (in the legal sense of the word) and supported by probable cause the search will turn up evidence of criminal activity. The warrants served to Google force the company to search the entirety of its data stores to provide data responsive to the warrant. And cops don’t actually believe it is involved in the crime being investigated. All they feel they have to show a court is that it’s probable Google houses the data it seeks. Whether or not the data can be linked to a suspect is conveniently ignored.
Legal rulings on these warrants are all over the place. Given the relative novelty of this technique, it’s unlikely individual federal circuits — much less the Supreme Court — will be delivering clarifying precedent any time soon.
Given that fact, it’s probably best to just remove yourself from this equation. The most tenacious will find a way to live life without Google products, services, operating systems, or hardware. For everyone else, Ovide details how people can opt out of most Google services to ensure they won’t be swept up the next time cops decide an criminal investigation requires nothing more than a few mouse clicks.
In the “Activity controls” settings of a personal Google account, you can turn on or off the option for Google to save records of everywhere you go with your phone or other mobile device.
[…]
You can also delete all or parts of your Location History data.
To minimize Google’s data on what you search, go to the Activity controls and click “turn off” in the Web & App Activity section. It helps to use Chrome and Google web search without logging into a Google account.
These steps should help keep you from being swept up by geofence warrants. “Should” is the operative term, though. Whatever you’ve decided to stop handing over to Google directly may, at points, be gathered indirectly via ad partners or sites/apps/services that heavily integrate Google infrastructure.
Even if it’s impossible to quit Google completely, a few small steps will lower your Google footprint, making it a bit more difficult to end up on a digital lineup provided by Google to investigators who have no idea who they’re looking for but know exactly where to go to get a bunch of data without being asked too many questions from their judicial oversight. The more you know, as they say. And the more you know, the less Google knows about you.