NewsVine_Mariyam
Platinum Member
The most senior member of one of the organizations of which I am a member posted this to our listserv indicating that this is a case we may want to keep our eyes on:
Privacy advocates are watching the case closely, concerned that police could use reverse keyword searches to investigate people who seek information about abortions.Google searches are now being used by police for leads in crimes.NBC News / Malorny via Getty Images file
June 30, 2022, 11:27 AM PDTBy Jon SchuppeA teen charged with setting a fire that killed five members of a Senegalese immigrant family in Denver, Colorado, has become the first person to challenge police use of Google search histories to find someone who might have committed a crime, according to his lawyers.The pushback against this surveillance tool, known as a reverse keyword search, is being closely watched by privacy and abortion rights advocates, who are concerned that it could soon be used to investigate women who search for information about obtaining an abortion in states where the procedure is now illegal.In documents filed Thursday in Denver District Court, lawyers for the 17-year-old argue that the police violated the Constitution when they got a judge to order Google to check its vast database of internet searches for users who typed in the address of a home before it was set ablaze on Aug. 5, 2020. Three adults and two children died in the fire.That search of Google’s records helped point investigators to the teen and two friends, who were eventually charged in the deadly fire, according to police records. All were juveniles at the time of their arrests. Two of them, including the 17-year-old, are being tried as adults; they both pleaded not guilty. The defendant in juvenile court has not yet entered a plea.The 17-year-old’s lawyers say the search, and all evidence that came from it, should be thrown out because it amounted to a blind expedition through billions of Google users’ queries based on a hunch that the killer typed the address into a search bar. That, the lawyers argued, violated the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches.“People have a privacy interest in their internet search history, which is really an archive of your personal expression,” said Michael Price, who is lead litigator of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers’ Fourth Amendment Center and one of the 17-year-old’s attorneys.“Search engines like Google are a gateway to a vast trove of information online and the way most people find what they’re looking for. Every one of those queries reveals something deeply private about a person, things they might not share with friends, family or clergy.”Keyword searches have grown increasingly common in recent years, as police have used them to search for suspects in a variety of crimes, including a string of Texas bombings, sexual abuse in Wisconsin and fraud in Minnesota. They differ from traditional search warrants in that police seek them without knowing the name of a suspect; instead, they are seeking information that might lead them to a suspect.Google does not publish data on the number of keyword search requests it receives, and did not respond to a request to provide that information. Google also did not respond to requests for comment.Now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, privacy advocates and women’s rights groups worry that keyword searches could expand into investigations of illegal abortions in states that have outlawed them.“Police officers are going to try to investigate people they think are violating those laws. One way of finding that is to ask Google to hand over information on everyone who has searched for a Planned Parenthood in a particular place,” said Jennifer Lynch, surveillance litigation director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit civil rights group that plans to file a brief supporting the 17-year-old’s challenge to the keyword search warrant.“If Google is allowed or required to turn over information in this Colorado case, there is nothing to stop a court in a state that has outlawed abortion to also require Google to turn over information on that kind of keyword search.”
