GateHouse Media
February 22, 2019
Google knows where you are every minute of every day.
A recent Associated Press investigation found that many
Google services on Android devices and iPhones store user location data even
when the user doesn’t want the location data transmitted or stored.
The privacy issue affects some 2 billion users of devices
that run Google’s Android operating software and hundreds of millions of
worldwide iPhone users who rely on Google for maps or searches.
So, guess who’s looking for Google - the police. With all of
that data about where people go, and where they have been, Google is a hot
commodity in the criminal justice system.
For the last couple of years, police departments nationwide
have been tapping into Google’s extensive catalogue of cell phone location data
to help solve crimes.
Through the use of “reverse location search warrants” crime
investigators have been able to track the movements of every cell phone in a
given neighborhood, town or even across an entire city.
Reverse location search warrants are not your “founding
fathers’” search warrants. When the Bill of Rights were drafted in 1791, the
leaders of the new Republic were not far removed from the abusive British Writs
of Assistance that were used to enter any colonial home, at any time, without
basis to search for contraband.
The Fourth Amendment was what the founders came up with to
protect themselves from unlawful searches and seizures. The amendment provides
that people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effect and
that ”(N)o Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause.”
What is probable cause? An investigator seeking a search
warrant must have supporting facts that a search will reveal evidence of a
crime.
A reverse location search warrant differs from a traditional
search warrant in that it doesn’t identify a suspect and establish probable
cause to ask for evidence of a suspect’s crimes. Instead, it asks for
information about everyone in an area at a certain time, working backwards to
identify a suspect.
Initially, a reverse location search warrant requests
anonymized data, data that is not attributed to a named individual, from a
specific geographic area during a period of time that is related to a crime.
With the anonymized list, the search warrant may provide
that law enforcement will narrow it down by comparing the specific time of
crime with the location of a cell phone. Once reduced a second time, the
smaller anonymized list is produced. The police then request identifying
account information, including user names, subscriber information and devices
associated with the specific accounts.
That information is used to connect the same individual to
multiple crime scenes or separate areas that are crucial to the investigation.
Law enforcement officials promote the warrants an important
new tool in fighting crime organized criminal activity, and it does not
infringe on an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy.
Criminal defense attorneys argue that providing enormous
amounts of data to law enforcement based on a “hunch” violates the Fourth
Amendment. Reverse location search warrants are based on a hunch. The police
are operating on the theory that the person responsible for a crime at a given
location had an Android or iPhone and - if their hunch is correct - they might
be able to pick the suspect out of hundreds or even thousands of other cell
phone users.
″(Law enforcement) needs to suspect a particular person or
criminal activity, not just go, for example, search every home in a given
area,” Jennifer Lynch, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told NPR.
No one would tolerate the government going into every home
in a neighborhood to search for a suspect, nor should one look the other way
when the police - without probable cause or specificity or even a suspect - are
permitted to analyze data on thousands of law abiding citizens.
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett,
Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner’s Toll, 2010 was released by
McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him
on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.
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