Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/13/google-provides-police-with-user-info-based-on-search-terms.html
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everything you type into Google goes on your permanent record
Oh… I mean yeah, I know that. 
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Memo to self: don’t crime while logged in.
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Use DuckDuckGo.
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Now partnering with Apple Maps for walking and driving directions!
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Call me naive (Hokey-dokey, yer naive), but I’ve been under the impression since first logging on that the Feds in the US were already harvesting all of that information, long before Google started offering it up.
Hell, I’m going back to Alta Vista…
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Is all they’ll release the IP address? VPN for the win?
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Yep, this gave me pause, but since the entire brand at DuckDuckGo is oriented around privacy, I tend to take them at their word that they’re decoupling the mapping from any identifiable personal data.
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To be on the safe side, don’t be logged into your Apple ID while criming.
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I gave up a prime opportunity for a joke here about how you’ll never even find your criming destination if you use Apple Maps, but that seemed a little too 2012 to be funny.
[edit: typo]
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Ooooh, never heard of that one. Thanks!
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Also, various flavors of Searx.
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This story does give me pause, but let’s re-inject some of the nuance that the summary lacks.
The police asked a judge who issued a warrant. Google complied with the warrant. That’s kinda how these things are supposed to go. The judge’s role is to determine whether the scope is appropriate.
It’s possible judges rubberstamp these things, which would be a huge concern.
It’s also possible that, before issuing this warrant, the judge considered that the address is a very specific search term with a high probability of a direct connection to a specific serious crime and that the request was for searches performed in a limited period of time leading up to the crime. Given those limiting factors, it’s conceivable that the judge considered the request to be reasonably narrow in scope in the eyes of the law and legal precedent.
One could certainly disagree with that particular decision. But it’s not quite as bad as Big Company giving Police information on anybody and everybody given any old flimsy criteria.
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Coming to this from my perspective of a librarian, this is not really getting at the point. The issue is not whether Google or the police skirted the procedural requirements of the law. The issue is that Google has and retains this information in the first place. Google, by its nature, does not place a value on user privacy. If it did, this information would not be available to the police for the asking.
The predictable protest here is that, well, the person did (allegedly) commit a crime and that Google is doing good by helping the law bring the (alleged) criminal to justice. Setting aside whether searching for a particular address is anything more than circumstantial (and, in fact, setting aside the circumstances of the particular case in general) the question is – when the police come calling for you, do you want Google giving up your details?
And if you are indifferent to the concerns of the police coming after you, because you haven’t committed a crime, there are plenty of articles on BoingBoing and other sites that should make it clear this is a cold bit of comfort.
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I kinda figured my dystopian future would be a bit more exciting than this, though. It’s so predictably on point.
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also watch out for not criming things, like organizing or participating in protests for racial justice or environmental causes or probably anything related to the current president.
you don’t actually have to break any laws yourself to be targeted in sweeps for “rioters” and “looters”
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This will be sorted out in the Barrett Supreme Court. All this stuff will be declared legal and we can just sit back and enjoy being surveilled.
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Also this. See my comment here:
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You seem to have misinterpreted what I said or your comment was written as a reply to someone else.
The issue is not whether Google or the police skirted the procedural requirements of the law.
I was responding to the headline, which could easily be misconstrued as suggesting the courts are bypassed. Also, since headlines are written in present tense, it suggests that Google continuously and routinely provides information like this to police.
All I was doing was pointing out that the details don’t support such a broad assertion.
Neither the BoingBoing summary nor the linked article are about the fact that Google and other tech companies collect and retain this kind of information. We all know they have this info even though we’d prefer it if they didn’t. The headlines, the article, and the summary breathlessly suggest the police have broad, direct, and ongoing access to that data.
So, yes, that is, in fact, the issue, at least, the issue I was talking about. If you want to add the whether-Google-should-have-the-data question to the discussion, fine. But please don’t suggest that I weighed in on it here, because I haven’t.
If you want to add the-legal-process-is-insufficient-to-meet-the-fourth-amendment, I’m open to that conversation as well. But I haven’t yet said a word on that topic, so please don’t assume you know my position.
The predictable protest here is that, well, the person did (allegedly) commit a crime and that Google is doing good by helping the law bring the (alleged) criminal to justice.
This doesn’t have any connection to anything I wrote. I did not protest. I did not assert Google is doing good. I did not defend Google for collecting and maintaining this information. I did not reference the criminal nor the suspect. I intentionally did not even comment on whether I thought the judge did the right thing.
What I said was that there is a legal process here and that it appears to have been followed. The headlines, the article, and the summary de-emphasize the details and tend toward the over-generalized conclusion that Google “gives away data.”
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