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A coalition of 59 civil rights, labor, and civil society organizations sent an open letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai Tuesday, demanding the company be more transparent when it comes to how often it complies with law enforcement requests for user data. What's more, the letter signatories — which include the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, and the Brennan Center for Justice — want Google's help in resisting what they see as the "alarming growth" in searches carried out by law enforcement.
From where you've been to what you search, Google knows a lot about you. Increasingly, so does law enforcement. Of particular concern in Tuesday's letter, sent via USPS and email, are so called geofence warrants and keyword warrants.
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"These blanket warrants circumvent constitutional checks on police surveillance, creating a virtual dragnet of our religious practices, political affiliations, sexual orientation, and more," reads the letter in part.
Geofence warrants involve police asking a company with location data on its users, like, say, Google, who (if anyone) was in a specific area at a specific time. This practice was in the news in 2019, when it was revealed that authorities had relied, in part, on geofence warrants in the effort to identify an alleged serial bomber in Austin, Texas. As the New York Timesreported at the time, authorities requested that location data from Google.
Keyword warrants, on the other hand, are troublingly invasive in an altogether different way. They involve law enforcement requesting data on every individual who searched for a specific phrase or location.
Both types of warrants are on the rise. An October CNET article cited in Tuesday's letter reports that "Google received 15 times more geofence warrant requests in 2018 compared with 2017, and five times more in 2019 than 2018."
"As a leading recipient of geofence and keyword warrants, Google is uniquely situated to provide public oversight of these abusive practices," reads the letter. "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."
In 2019, the New York Timesreported on a collection of Google user location data dubbed Sensorvault — "a trove of detailed location records involving at least hundreds of millions of devices worldwide." People who use Google services with Location History turned on, reported the Times, had their data stored by Google.
Google would then, in some circumstances, make that location data available to law enforcement.
That this practice, which takes place out of site of the average Google user, appears to be on the rise is part of what drives the new request.
How Google will respond is anyone's guess, but one thing is clear: Geofence and keyword warrants are here to stay. That is, unless privacy and civil rights activists can do anything about it.
"By providing this semiannual breakdown of requests, tracking the growth of these abusive tactics over time, [Google will] provide us and other civil society organizations vital ammunition in the fight for privacy," concludes the letter.
Fingers crossed Pichai reads it.
The full list of signatories is below.
S.T.O.P. - The Surveillance Technology Oversight ProjectAccess Now
Advocacy for Principled Action in Government
Alternate ROOTS
Amnesty International - USA
Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF)
Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Asian Law Caucus
Brennan Center for Justice
Brooklyn Defender Services
CAIR-Minnesota
California LGBT Arts Alliance
Center for Human Rights and Privacy
Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law at NYU Law
Community Alliance for Global Justice Council on American-Islamic Relations, New York (CAIR-NY)
Cypurr Collective
Defending Rights & Dissent
Demand Progress
Due Process Institute
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Emonyo Yefwe International
Empire State Indivisible
Encode Justice
Equal Justice Under Law
Ethics in Technology a 501 c 3
Fight for the Future
Freedom of the Press Foundation FreedomWorks
Government Accountability Project Hacking//Hustling
Islamophobia Studies Center
Legal Action Center
Media Alliance
National Coalition Against Censorship
New America's Open Technology Institute New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) New York
County Defender Services Nicaragua Center for Community Action Northern New Jersey Jewish
Voice for Peace Oakland Privacy
Occupy Bergen County (N.J.)
OCF @ U.C. Berkeley
PDX Privacy
Policing and Social Justice Project
Project South
Restore The Fourth
Reviving the Islamic Sisterhood for Empowerment (RISE)
TechActivist.Org
Technology for Liberty Program, ACLU of Massachusetts
Tenth Amendment Center
The Bronx Defenders
The Calyx Institute
The Legal Aid Society of NYC
The Project On Government Oversight TKE
United Voices of Cortland
Urban Justice Center
Visionary V
Wolfson Cybersecurity Club
X-Lab
Topics Cybersecurity Google Privacy