For years, geofence warrants have been widely used by police to create suspect lists when there’s nowhere else to look. But that’s all over now in New York and the rest of the U.S. since Google made a company-wide change to how it handles these types of information requests.
What’s the problem with geofence warrants?
Opponents of these reverse-location services have long called out the potential for abuse by law enforcement. Troubling reports indicated that police met minimal resistance, with few questions asked when they worked through Google to obtain user data. This has led the company to stop responding to geofence warrants altogether.
A common objection to these warrants is that they are overly broad. Opponents say that simply because someone happened to be in the vicinity of a crime scene at the time of the incident shouldn’t be enough to have their privacy invaded and potentially throw them into a criminal defense case.
How do geofence warrants work?
Tech companies like Google offer a suite of services. In the process, the company obtains a considerable amount of information about the people who use it. This includes location-based services that show a history of when and where they logged on to their device.
A geofence warrant could be issued by law enforcement to any tech company. The reason why Google comes up so much is because of the data it keeps on its users’ location history. Google’s massive popularity also made it a logical first step for police who wanted to know who was at a given location at a specific time.
Geofence warrants are intended for use by police primarily when there aren’t any other leads to go off of, and they have helped to solve numerous cold cases. But the ease with which police could obtain this information, invade the privacy of innocent passersby and implicate them in a crime was enough for Google to finally change its practices.
