In this week’s newsletter: ‘Geofence warrants’ mistakenly associated an individual with a crime, prompting concerns about comparable instances
In January 2020, Zachary McCoy, a resident of Florida, received a concerning email from Google. The message notified him that local authorities were requesting his personal information, and he had only seven days to prevent Google from disclosing it.
Later, McCoy learned that the police were conducting an investigation into a burglary and had issued a ‘geofence warrant’ to Google. This court-ordered warrant compelled Google to identify and furnish information about all devices present in the vicinity of the burglarized home during the alleged crime. Unfortunately, McCoy happened to be on one of his regular bike rides in the neighborhood at that time, and the data provided by Google to the police erroneously placed him near the scene of the burglary.
Consequently, McCoy found himself implicated in a crime in which he had no involvement, solely due to being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
This incident was not an isolated occurrence. Across the United States, spanning from Virginia to Florida, law enforcement agencies are increasingly employing investigative tools referred to as reverse search warrants. These encompass geofence location warrants and keyword search warrants, which are utilized to generate a list of potential suspects associated with specific criminal activities.
Geofence warrants, in particular, empower law enforcement to compel tech companies to identify all devices in the vicinity of a specified location and time. Conversely, keyword search warrants are employed to acquire information about individuals who have searched for particular keywords or phrases.
This practice has drawn criticism from public defenders, privacy advocates, and numerous lawmakers who contend that it violates Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches. In contrast to reverse search warrants, traditional warrants and subpoenas target specific individuals for whom law enforcement has established probable cause of involvement in a particular crime. Geofence warrants, on the other hand, are broad in scope and are frequently utilized to compile a list of potential suspects for further investigation.
A dearth of transparency
Furthermore, there is a lack of transparency surrounding this practice. While major tech corporations such as Apple and Google routinely publish transparency reports revealing the global count of user data requests they receive, historically, there has been limited information about the extent to which these requests relate to geofence warrants.
In response to pressure from advocacy organizations like the Surveillance Oversight Tech Project (Stop) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Google, in 2021, for the first time, offered a breakdown of the number of geofence warrants it had received. The company disclosed that it had encountered nearly 21,000 geofence warrants between 2018 and 2020. However, it did not specify the number of these requests to which it had complied. Google did share that in the latter half of 2020, it responded to 82% of all government data requests in the United States with some level of information. Since then, the company has not provided updates on the number of geofence warrants it received and did not respond to requests for comment at the time of publication.
They are jeopardizing the safety of their users
While companies like Google claim to thoroughly scrutinize each legal data request, there are constraints when confronted with valid subpoenas or warrants. Tech companies can only resist such requests to a certain extent, provided they have access to the requested data. As illustrated in Apple’s transparency report, the primary approach to shielding user data from broad law enforcement requests is to abstain from collecting it in the first place, or at the very least, to encrypt or implement other protective measures to hinder easy access.
Nevertheless, technology firms, including Google, heavily rely on the aggregation of user data to enhance their financial performance and are often reluctant to take the necessary measures to safeguard this data, even when viable technical solutions exist, according to Albert Fox Cahn, the director of Stop.
Google has faced increasing pressure from U.S. consumers to improve the protection of location and health data, especially in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn federal abortion protections. In response, the company committed to concealing location data when users visit “sensitive locations,” such as reproductive care clinics. However, as first revealed by The Guardian in November 2022, searches for directions to Planned Parenthood facilities and guidance to abortion clinics through Google Maps continued to be recorded in users’ Google activity timelines for several months after the announcement.
Not a singular occurrence
While experts contend that Apple has room to further safeguard user data, such as adopting default encryption for personal information instead of relying on opt-ins, the transparency report could contribute to the escalating pressure on competitors like Google to strengthen defenses against broad reverse search warrants. According to Crocker, “Google is under heightened scrutiny due to geofence warrants, and I think that scrutiny is enduring.”
Meanwhile, geofence warrants persist in causing upheaval in the lives of individuals, especially since public defenders and lawyers are still in the midst of comprehending these legal requests and devising strategies to contest them.
In this context, Zachary McCoy stands among the fortunate minority. Normally, individuals whose data is targeted through subpoenas or warrants don’t receive alerts from the company regarding the possible disclosure of their information. Such requests frequently accompany gag orders, restricting the company from informing the individual under investigation. Following the receipt of the email, McCoy sought legal advice, resulting in the filing of a motion to quash the subpoena, ultimately prompting the local police to rescind the warrant. However, many others facing similar circumstances may not be as fortunate.