"Keyword Warrants" - Feds Secretly Ordered Google To Identify Anyone Searching Certain Information
"Keyword Warrants" - Feds Secretly Ordered Google To Identify Anyone Searching Certain Information
BY TYLER DURDEN WEDNESDAY, OCT 06, 2021 - 03:03 PM
An accidentally unsealed court
document reveals that the federal government secretly ordered
Google to provide data on people searching specific search words or phrases,
otherwise known as "keyword warrants," according
to Forbes.
According to the report, the Justice Department inadvertently
unsealed the documents in September (which were promptly re-sealed), which were
reviewed by Forbes. In several instances, law enforcement
investigators asked Google to identify anyone
searching for specific keywords.
The first case was in 2019 when federal investigators were on
the hunt for men they believed sex-trafficked a minor. According to a search
warrant, the minor went missing but reappeared a year later and claimed to have
been kidnapped and sexually assaulted. Investigators asked Google if
anyone had searched the minor's name. The tech giant responded and
provided law enforcement agents with Google accounts and IP addresses of those
who made the searches.
There have been other rare examples of so-called keyword warrants,
such as in 2020 when police asked Google if anyone searched for the address of
an arson victim in the government's racketeering case against singer R Kelly.
Then in 2017, a Minnesota judge requested Google to provide information on
anyone who searched for a fraud victim's name.
Forbes also
added this update post-publication:
After
publication, Jennifer Lynch, surveillance litigation director at the Electronic
Frontier Foundation (EFF), highlighted three other Google keyword warrants that
were used in the investigation into serial Austin bombings in 2018, which
resulted in the deaths of two people.
Not
widely discussed at the time, the orders appear even broader than the one
above, asking
for IP addresses and Google account information of individuals who searched for
various addresses and some terms associated with bomb making, such as “low
explosives” and “pipe bomb.” Similar
orders were served on Microsoft and Yahoo for their respective search engines.
As for
what data the tech companies gave to investigators, that information remains
under seal.
You can
read the orders on Google here, here and here. The
Microsoft and Yahoo orders can be found here and here.
Every year, Google responds to thousands of warrant orders, but
the latest keyword warrant is an entirely new strategy by government
investigators and is becoming increasingly controversial.
"Trawling through Google's search history database enables
police to identify people merely based on what they might have been thinking
about, for whatever reason, at some point in the past," Jennifer Granick,
surveillance and cybersecurity counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union,
told Forbes. "This never-before-possible
technique threatens First Amendment interests and will inevitably sweep up
innocent people, especially if the keyword terms are not unique and the time
frame not precise. To make matters worse, police are currently doing this in
secret, which insulates the practice from public debate and
regulation," she added.
Google responded news about secret keyword warrants and
defended its decision:
"As
with all law enforcement requests, we have a rigorous process that is designed
to protect the privacy of our users while supporting the important work of law
enforcement," a Google spokesperson said.
Court records reviewed by Forbes show Google has given away data
on people who searched for specific keywords, which is more evidence the US
is transforming into an authoritarian state of monitoring and surveillance of
online activities just like China's.
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