Google soon allow users to store their location data on their devices rather than on Google servers, effectively ending a long-standing surveillance practice that allowed police and law enforcement to tap into vast banks of location data Google to identify potential criminals.
The use of so-called “geofence collaterals” has exploded in recent years, thanks in large part to the ubiquity of smartphones, along with data-hungry companies like Google, which hoover up and store huge amounts of location data from its users, which can be obtained by law. execution requests.
Police can use geofencing warrants (also known as reverse location warrants) to require Google to hand over information about which users' devices were in a particular geographic area at a given time.
But critics say geofencing orders are unconstitutional and inherently overbroad, since these lawsuits often also include the information of completely innocent people who were technology/2023/oct/03/techscape-geofence-warrants”>nearby at the time a crime was committed. Even Courts cannot agree on whether geofencing orders are legal.which will likely generate an eventual challenge before the United States Supreme Court.
Google's announcement this week did not mention geofence orders specifically, saying only that the decision to store location data on their devices would give users “more control” over their data. The measure actually forces police to request a search warrant to access that specific device, instead of asking Google for the data.
While Google is not the only company subject to geofencing safeguards, Google has been by far the largest collector of sensitive location data and the first to be leveraged for it.
The practice of police using Google to obtain user location data was technology/google-sensorvault-location-tracking.html”>first revealed in 2019. Google has long relied on its users' location data to drive its advertising business, which during 2022 alone generated about 80% of Google's annual revenue, about $220 billion.
But in reality, this surveillance technique is believed to be much broader. Authorities later expanded their demands for location data to other companies. Microsoft and Yahoo (owner of TechCrunch) are known to receive geofencing guarantees, although neither company has yet revealed how many requests for user location data they receive.
In recent years, the number of legal cases involving geofencing lawsuits has skyrocketed.
Minneapolis police used a geofencing warrant to identify people who attended protests following the police killing of George Floyd. The overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 raised fears that law enforcement in states where access to abortion care is limited or where seeking an abortion is illegal could use geofencing warrants to identify those seeking care. Lawmakers later urged Google to stop collecting location data over fears the information could be used to identify people seeking abortions.
Although the companies have said little about how many geofencing warrants they receive, last year Google, Microsoft and Yahoo backed a New York state bill that would have banned the use of geofencing warrants statewide. The bill failed to become law.
Google has not said how many geofencing guarantees it has received in recent years. Google released its most recent (and only) disclosure about the number of geofencing orders it received in 2021 following pressure to reveal the figures following growing criticism of the surveillance practice.
The data showed that Google received 982 geofencing orders in 2018, then 8,396 geofencing orders in 2019 and 11,554 geofencing orders in 2020, or about a quarter of all legal claims Google received. The disclosure, although limited, offered the first look at the sharp increase in the number of these requests, but Google did not say how often the search giant rejects these legal demands for user location data, if at all.
The news that Google will soon move its users' location data to their devices was met with cautious praise.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has challenged the constitutionality of the geofencing orders in court, said in a blog post that “at least for now, we will take it as a victory.” But the EFF noted that there are other ways Google can still hand over sensitive personal data of its users. Law enforcement agencies use similar legal demands, called “reverse keyword” orders, to identify Google accounts that searched for a particular keyword over time, such as before a crime was committed. Google has not said whether it plans to close the loophole that allows police and law enforcement to comply with so-called “reverse keyword” warrants for users' search queries.
This is not to say that geofencing safeguards will disappear overnight. Google still retains huge banks of historical location data that police can access at any time, until Google decides it no longer wants to retain it. And while technology companies store large amounts of user location data, they may also be subject to similar legal demands.
But there are hopes that Google closing the door on geofencing orders (at least in the future) could significantly reduce this surveillance loophole.
In its latest transparency report In 2022, Apple said it received 13 geofencing orders demanding location data from its customers, but provided no data in return. Apple said it “does not have any data to provide in response to geofence requests” as the data resides on users' devices, which Apple says it cannot access.
