Security News > 2021 > September > Google Report Spotlights Uptick in Controversial ‘Geofence Warrants’ by Police

Google said, in an August report, the number of geofence warrants the company received from law enforcement agencies jumped from 982 in 2018 to 11,554 in 2020.

"Since the start of 2018, we have seen a rise in the number of search warrants in the United States that order Google to identify users, based on their Location History information, who may have been in a given area within a certain time," Google said.

In 2020 Zachary McCoy received an email from Google notifying him that police investigators had demanded his location data for a specific date as part of a geofence warrant.

Geofence warrants were issued last summer amid the protests that followed after police shot Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis. The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms served Google with at least 12 geofence warrants to hunt down arsonists by randomly sweeping up the data of anyone within a couple hundred yards away, the EFF said.

The EFF and others want Google to push back against both geofence warrants, as well as warrants for user keyword searches.

"As a leading recipient of geofence and keyword warrants, Google is uniquely situated to provide public oversight of these abusive practices," the letter read. We ask you to do just that by expanding your industry-leading transparency report to provide monthly data on the number of non-traditional court orders received, including granular information on geofence warrants, keyword warrants, and any analogous requests.

News URL

https://threatpost.com/google-controversial-geofence-warrants/174938/