Catch the bad guys and ask Google! User online data has become the "golden finger" of US police investigation

Focus

1. Google users' location and search data are increasingly being used by U.S. law enforcement to find clues or identify suspects.

2. With the support of GPS and Wi-Fi networks, Google can usually estimate the specific location of a specific user, and the error is only within tens of centimeters.

3. By reviewing keywords on Google searches, police can identify people who are searching for certain information on Google.

Google received 60,472 search warrants in the U.S. last year, more than double the number in 2019, and 80% of them provided at least partial information.

5. Although these warrants can unearth more valuable clues when the police are inactive, they often look through the Google data of people unrelated to the crime, which is easy to invade privacy.

As U.S. law enforcement officers increasingly use search warrants to obtain Google users' location and search data, this data has become a golden finger for police to solve crimes. Even in cases of nonviolence, even people unrelated to crime, their data may be called.

Location data and search data, Google has two cutting-edge investigation tools

One morning in January 2020, Robert Potts was preparing to drive his SUV to the Police Academy in Raleigh, North Carolina. He started warming up the car, thinking about the exam, and then went back to his apartment for lunch. When he returned, he found his SUV gone, along with a rubber training pistol, a pair of handcuffs and a portable radio.

Raleigh police found the SUV at lunchtime, but Potts was still upset because losing equipment was terrible behavior for officers, especially for a novice. The thieves stole some of Potts' equipment, including the most sensitive radio. Someone could use this device to interfere with police station communications and make false reports. However, Potts' boss assured him that they would take care of it.

Potts refocused on the exam, completely unaware of the consequences of his morning mistakes. He said Raleigh police were able to remotely turn off his radio, ensuring their communications were not leaked. But the police are not going to drop the case. In retrieving the radio, they used two cutting-edge investigative tools available to local law enforcement, both provided by Google.

Days after the theft, Raleigh police issued a search warrant to Google asking for a list of people who were nearby when the device was stolen. They also secured a judge's order requiring the company to find anyone who Googled "Motorola APX 6000" and similar phrases in the days after the device disappeared. In response, Google handed over user location data.

Google has one of the most comprehensive repositories of location information in the world. Based on the phone's GPS coordinates, coupled with connections to Wi-Fi networks and cell towers, it can usually estimate a person's specific location, with an error of tens of centimeters. Google collects this information in part to sell ads, but police often use the data to further investigate. The use of search data is less common, but it has also found its way into police stations across the country.

Police say the warrants can uncover more valuable leads when detectives are doing nothing. But to get those leads, police often have to look through Google data from people unrelated to the crime. And that's where privacy advocates are worried.

Traditionally, under the Constitution's prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures, U.S. law enforcement can search a person's home or belongings only after obtaining a search warrant. Michael Price, director of litigation at the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys' Fourth Amendment Center, said that in some ways, searches of Google users' location and search data are the opposite of the process. Instead of looking for suspects, law enforcement determines basic parameters, a set of geographic coordinates or search terms, and asks Google for matching results, essentially generating a list of clues.

Google received 60,472 search warrants last year, like a floodgate opened

Police have been using different versions of this method for decades. In addition to searching suspects' trunks, surveillance footage from phone companies and cell tower data can violate privacy. But the sheer amount of information Google provides—including where billions of people have been and what they've searched for—is an increasingly valuable resource than ever before.

By their very nature, these Google search warrants usually return information from people who are not suspected of committing a crime. In 2018, a man in Arizona was wrongfully arrested for Google location data. Despite this possibility, the police have continued to use the practice in the years since. "In many ways, law enforcement thinks it's like pressing a simple button," Price said. He is launching some legal challenges over Google's location and search data authorization. "If Google complys in another set of cases, it will be difficult for it to continue refusing." Once this door is opened, it slowly turns into a floodgate. ”

Google said it received a record 60,472 search warrants in the U.S. last year, more than double the number in 2019. In about 80% of cases, the company provided at least partial information. While many big tech companies receive at least occasional requests for information from law enforcement, police see Google as uniquely suited to launch investigations when other leads are scarce.

Law enforcement experts say Google is the only company that provides details of personal devices at specific times and places. Apple, another major mobile operating system provider, has said that technically the company cannot provide the kind of location data that police want. That doesn't matter much, as many iPhone users rely on Google Maps and other Google apps. Google's search engine, which has 92 percent of the global market share, is currently the focus of antitrust litigation at the U.S. Department of Justice.

A Google spokesperson said the company would carefully review all police requests for user data and question what it deemed too broad. The company said recent court cases have put it in a better position to fight back. "We receive legitimate requests every day. At the same time, some requests may be overly broad, invade the right to privacy, and really inappropriate," said Kent Walker, president of global affairs at Google and its parent company, Alphabet. ”

The collection and analysis of 115 search warrants targeting Google's location and search data in five U.S. states is one of the largest reviews of such documents to date. The analysis, based on search warrants filed with courts in Austin, Denver, Phoenix, Raleigh and San Francisco from 2020 to 2023, shows that these departments use search warrants not only to address violent crimes, but also to deal with more routine crimes. Of those, about one-fifth of site search warrants are for crimes such as theft and sabotage.

In the case of the lost radio, Lt. Jason Borneo of the Raleigh Police Department said Google's data could be "key to obtaining stolen property," but Google said it did not provide the search data that investigators were looking for. They didn't take back the radios and didn't arrest anyone. Asked how the department learned that this type of information could be obtained from Google, Bernio said: "One detective learned about the keyword search order from another detective."

Law enforcement agencies are so dependent on Google that it's easier to turn to Google for answers?

In some cases, law enforcement agencies rely heavily on Google to apply for a search warrant against Google even if police have other leads to use. In law enforcement, as in life, sometimes it's easier to turn to Google for answers.

Cooperation between American business and police dates back to the age of the telegraph. In the years following the 9/11 attacks, the need for surveillance by federal agents increased dramatically. But only recently did most local police officers realize the huge potential of using Google location and search data to find clues.

Tech companies are rarely willing to provide this kind of help without a legal order. But with a search warrant, police can provide unprecedented insight into a person's life. They can get emails, text messages, and photos. The requirements depend on whether police have found a suspect. When confirmed, Google's help is the most coveted.

If a person's account uses a feature called Location History, Google can paint the most detailed picture of that person. For these users, Google compiled a list of places they've visited on their phones, recording their location every two minutes on average. The company invites users to enable the feature when using apps like Google Maps, whether on the iPhone or Google's Android.

Google positions this feature as a way to remember your travel experiences, rediscover places you've frequented, find out where you've been and how far you've traveled. The company says the feature has always been opt-in, and users are regularly alerted to data collection. It's estimated that one-third of active Google users have Location History turned on.

That data is crucial to Google's advertising business, which accounts for about 80 percent of Google's parent company's revenue. According to a 2021 court testimony by Marlo McGriff, Google's then-location history product manager, it could help marketers determine how many people visited a store after seeing an ad. The company stores location information in a database called Sensorvault. If a user turns off location history, the company stops collecting data, but the previous data remains on its servers, within the reach of law enforcement.

To obtain a search warrant, police created so-called geofencing, using software to draw a virtual border around the crime scene with location coordinates instead of a cordon belt. They must then convince the judge that they have a good chance of finding evidence of a crime in the area. If the judge approves, the police will send the search warrant to Google.

In 2016, Google received its first geocrime search warrant from federal agents. Over the past few years, the news has spread among law enforcement, driven in part by a cottage industry made up of companies that sell software to police departments. Many of the consultants who help law enforcement with cell tower data are now pitching them tools and workshops on using Google.

According to SmartProcurement, which maintains a database of government contracts, training courses have stretched from the suburbs of Woton, New Jersey, to Creston Hills, Iowa. An analysis of the smartProcurement data shows that spending by local law enforcement on geometric training and other cell phone investigation techniques more than tripled from 2017 to 2022.

These sessions can be enlightening. In 2018, Travis Staab, a detective in Mesa, Arizona, attended a training program provided by ZetX, a software company now owned by LexisNexis. He then filed for a search warrant to investigate an unsolved case that had been on his desk: a theft at a local gun store. The results sent by Google showed that one of the mall's devices had been active on the night of the incident, long after the closing time. Stubb found his suspect.

It's like an electronic fingerprint left over from the field, but not always useful

In the years since, Stubb has marveled at the success of his colleagues in applying Google Data, which he likens to "an electronic fingerprint you can find in the field." His partner identified two suspects in a murder at a local park and solved a series of catalytic converter thefts. The investigations were based on the fact that the burglars' cell phone was in close proximity to a power box, just as the power supply to the parking lot was cut off. "Right in that little dot in front of the power box, Google linked it to a person's name, email address, phone number, street address, and directly named the suspect," Stubb said. ”

It's easy to see Google data as a shortcut to solving crimes, but geosearch warrants are time-consuming and often ineffective. BusinessWeek reviewed court documents and other reports and found that in many cases, search warrants failed to provide any useful information.

In March 2021, Austin police obtained a geosearch warrant to track down a teenager who robbed a teenager who was riding a bicycle to deliver cornmeal roast to a neighbor's house. The assailant punched the child in the face, leaving his nose bleeding. A police department representative said Google provided the search results, but in the end police found no reason to prosecute anyone.

In Surprise Township, a suburb of Phoenix, detective Taylor Knight obtained five geo-crime search warrants in less than three months to investigate a series of thefts and vandalism that occurred at construction sites last year. Among the devices police tried to recover were a microwave oven and a stovetop. One of the search warrants targeted the theft of timber, demanding information on everyone who had been near the construction site for almost an entire week. The local police department said no charges had been filed at this time.

Last year, after a safe containing more than $30,000 worth of gold and silver coins and bars disappeared from the StorageMax plant, police in Holyss Springs, North Carolina, began seeking Google's location data. The safe belonged to William "B.J." Lawson), then CTO of Donald Trump's social media network Truth Social. While the judge approved the geosearch warrant, police ultimately didn't get any valid information from Google.

Police have become overly reliant on Google's location data, said Aaron Edens, an intelligence analyst who trains law enforcement officers in geosearch warrants. "In a way, it becomes a task that can be done by ticking."

Once this option is selected, Google evaluates a large number of requests and rebuttens them in due course. Google has a team called Legal Investigations Support (LIS) that reviews search warrants and subpoenas. Working with Google's legal counsel, an employee can handle 80 to 90 requests a week, many just a few years after graduation. Albert Gidari, Google's representative and a member of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, said the operations within tech companies could have a significant impact, with "20-somethings writing a whole bunch of articles about common law surveillance every day."

Former LIS employees said they were proud to have used all means to refute the data request, including catching a typo as a reason for denying a search warrant. One anonymous former employee said: "We are encouraged to refuse to do so. If they want this data, then they have to follow the rules. ”

But there's so much Google can do, after all, it is not always informed about the nature of the investigation or the severity of the crime. When a company receives a search warrant, Google's role boils down to making sure the request is technically feasible. Richard Salgado, who led Google's law enforcement and information security division for more than 13 years, said, "You're dealing with government requests, so these are not optional."

Google said it has increased the staff of its LIS team to meet the growing needs of the police. The company said that to protect users' privacy, it provided employees with the minimum amount of personal data needed to process requests.

To manage the tens of thousands of search warrants it receives each year, Google has developed formulas for handling common requests. For geocrime search warrants, the company follows a three-step process: Google first shares a list of all devices found at the time of the crime, removing information it believes could be used to identify users. Second, law enforcement can request more detailed information from a subset of the first group. Finally, in the third step, Google provided the names and email addresses of suspects officially identified as relevant to the investigation. According to the employee's statement in court, Google generally follows a similar procedure for keyword search warrants.

While the procedure is designed with privacy in mind, it also encourages police to exercise restraint. Typically, law enforcement officers must apply to a judge for a new search warrant at every step of the way, and insert Google's documents into different spreadsheets and mapping programs to make the data easier to understand, law enforcement officials said. Last year, Detective Alex Dyer of Scottsdale set out to investigate the robbery of a woman's wallet in the parking lot of a Target supermarket. When the first step didn't find anything promising from Google, Dell gave up, "I didn't ask for the second step."

Salgado, who left Google last year and now teaches courses on surveillance law and other policy issues at Stanford and Harvard, said: "It's not a magic technology, things are a lot more complicated than they seem." But it's so tempting that the government will use it. ”

Google's protection measures for anonymized data are not foolproof. According to expert testimony, the information provided in the second step may be reverse-engineered, which is especially worrying if sensitive locations such as medical clinics and places of worship are within the search area.

Andrew Crocker, director of surveillance litigation at the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, said: "It's all new, untested, and born out of development. This is very dangerous from a civil liberties point of view. ”

Even if Google provides search results, police must remember that the data is based on devices, not people. A man in Arizona who was wrongly charged with murder lent his car and an old phone to an acquaintance who was later arrested for the crime. Another restriction is that the warrant can only search for devices with Location History enabled. Some officials say the technology is becoming less effective as more criminals learn about it, with many turning off settings on their devices or leaving their phones at home before committing crimes.

Gradually, the call for reform grew louder. Lawmakers in California and New York introduced legislation barring police in those states from filing for geocrime and keyword search warrants, but the proposals were shelved for fear that the bills would hamper necessary investigations.

Some lawmakers are motivated by the Supreme Court's overturning decision in Roe v Wade and how Google data can be used to track women who have abortions. A law passed by California last year prohibits companies in the state from providing data to prosecute people seeking abortions. Google has asked law enforcement to prove that they did not request information for this purpose, though supporters remain concerned that the data could be weaponized.

Google dismissed more than 2,000 search warrants, pushing legislation to establish uniform standards across the United States

U.S. federal law limits the use of wiretapping to investigating serious crimes such as murder, kidnapping and drug trafficking, and law enforcement must prove that they cannot collect evidence to investigate cases by less intrusive means. Geographic crime search warrants do not have such restrictions. Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the security and surveillance program at the Center for Democracy & Technology, a think tank, said: "This is a clear signal that we need a strong national standard."

However, there is considerable disagreement as to whether the risks posed by civil liberties outweigh the potential benefits of law enforcement. Roy Schahrer, a salesman in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler, was questioned by police after Google data showed he was near the scene of a 2021 shooting. Officer Emma Huenneke said officers ruled him out after identifying him as "a common cat feeder" in the neighborhood. Shahel said he was not bothered by questioning or by police viewing his Google account. "I prefer them to investigate, and I prefer that they follow any leads they need," he said. If I were the guilty person, I might feel differently. ”

Judges in some states do think differently. Courts in California and Virginia have rejected geo-criminal search warrants based on an overly extensive scan of Google data. Virginia's ruling last year stemmed from a case in which police obtained a geocrime search warrant covering more than 68,000 square meters in an attempt to solve a bank robbery. Lyla Zeidan, a law enforcement lecturer and former prosecutor in Ashburn, Virginia, said it has made some departments wary of using Google data, fearing that the evidence may not be tenable in court, "which should be a warning to law enforcement."

Google said the Virginia ruling puts it better equipped to fight back against overwhelming demands and support legislative reforms. The company said it successfully opposed nearly 2,000 geofencing warrants over the past year, including those involving thousands of devices or involving sensitive locations such as places of worship. Google declined to say how many geosearch warrants it received during that period.

One of the most important lawsuits is taking place in Colorado. The case revolves around the 2020 case in which a family of five was killed in a fire. Video captured by surveillance cameras showed three masked men running wildly through the yard just before the house caught fire, one of the detectives' only clues. Denver police obtained nearly 24 search warrants but failed to find any leads, including two geofencing warrants. So one of the detectives in charge of the case tried something he had never done before: he obtained a court order asking for information about someone who had Googled the address of the house in the two weeks before the fire.

After repeated communications and calls to Google's outside legal counsel, Google provided the data. Detectives locked five accounts in Colorado, specifically three of them that had searched for the address multiple times. Police traced the accounts to three teenagers who had been arrested for murder. A spokesman for the Denver District Attorney said one of the children told police he set fire to the house because he thought the man stole his iPhone. The teenager didn't realize he had the wrong target until he saw the headlines the next day.

Investigators found one of them, Gavin Seymour, after Googling the address of the house 14 times in the days leading up to the fire. As part of the investigation, police also screened other people's accounts. The person identified as "EM" in court documents also Googled the address, but detectives ruled out her suspicions after reviewing all of her Google data, including her search history and records of places she had visited. They determined she had no contact with other suspects.

More than three years after the fire, one of the teenagers has pleaded guilty, but the other two are still pleading. Seymour argued that the keyword search warrant that opened the case constituted an unlawful search and that all evidence resulting from it should be suppressed. His motion is pending in the Colorado Supreme Court, the first challenge to the constitutionality of the technology.

The Colorado Supreme Court is expected to make a ruling by the end of the year. At the same time, law enforcement is looking for new ways to dig into the digital trail we're leaving behind. Police in the San Francisco and Phoenix areas have begun issuing search warrants for videos taken by self-driving cars as they drive on city streets, and one of the main targets of those warrants is Google's sister company, Waymo. (Text/Golden Deer)