In other words, with reverse search warrants law enforcement is still looking for their suspect and they’re asking tech companies to give them a list of people to investigate. Unlike other kinds of search warrants, which are targeted and seek information about people who law enforcement has probable cause to believe has committed a specific crime, these warrants don’t have a particular person in mind. Lawyers such as Kenyon and privacy experts argue geofence and other broad warrants such as those that ask companies to sift through keywords people searched for are akin to a general warrant, made illegal by the fourth amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures. That’s all it takes for the next type of search warrant to come about.” Dragnet search warrant “They’re coming up with everything they can to do their job. “As long as the data exists, all it takes is a creative law enforcement officer to say, ‘Hey, we can get a warrant or we can send a subpoena for this particular subset of the data that’s already being harvested’,” said Caleb Kenyon, the defense attorney who represented McCoy, to the Guardian. And they fear agencies and jurisdictions will use this relatively unchecked mechanism in the context of new and controversial laws such as the criminalization of nearly all abortions in Texas. They worry the increase signals the start of a new era, one in which law enforcement agencies find ever more creative ways to obtain user information from data-rich tech companies. It’s a concerning trend, argue experts and advocates.
Google revealed for the first time in August that it received 11,554 geofence location warrants from law enforcement agencies in 2020, up from 8,396 in 2019 and 982 in 2018.
Geofence location warrants and reverse search warrants such as the ones McCoy dealt with are increasingly becoming the tool of choice for law enforcement.
0 kommentar(er)
