Page 30 - TPA Journal November December 2024

rants, believing them to be a “potential threat to ment . . . can compel Google to provide addition-
user privacy.” Thus, Google developed an internal al . . . location coordinates beyond the time and
procedure on how to respond to geofence war- geographic scope of the original request.” The
rants. This procedure is divided into three steps. purpose of this additional data is to assist law
At Step 1, law enforcement provides Google with enforcement in eliminating devices that are, for
the geographical and temporal parameters around example, “not in the target location for enough
the time and place where the alleged crime time to be of interest, [or] were moving through
occurred. Following, Google searches its the target location in a manner inconsistent with
Sensorvault for all users who had Location other evidence.” As a general matter, “Google
History enabled during the law enforcement-pro- imposes no geographical limits on this Step 2
vided timeframe. Google is not capable of storing data.” “Google does, however, typically require
data in a way that enables it to search a specific law enforcement to narrow the number of users for
area, nor does Google know which users have which it requests Step 2 data so that the
saved their Location History prior to its search. Government cannot . . . simply seek geographical-
Thus, for every single geofence warrant Google ly unrestricted data for all users within the
responds to, it must search each account in its geofence.”
entire Sensorvault—all 592 million—to find Finally, at Step 3, law enforcement compels
responsive user records. It cannot just look at indi- Google to provide account-identifying informa-
vidual accounts. After Google searches its tion for the users that they determine are “relevant
Sensorvault, it determines which accounts were to the investigation.” This identifying information
within the geographic parameters of the warrant includes the names and emails associated with the
and lists each of those accounts with an listed device IDs. Using this information, law
anonymized device ID. Google also includes the enforcement can then pursue further investigative
date and time, the latitude and longitude, the techniques, such as cell phone tracking, or sending
geolocation source used, and the map display out additional warrants tailored to the specific
radius (i.e., the confidence interval). The volume information received.
of geofence data produced “depends on the size As a final note, even given the vast amount of data
and nature of the geographic area and length of Google has, and the unprecedented precision of
time covered by the geofence request.” “Google Google’s Location History, the results are not
does not impose specific, objective restraints on always spectacular. First, “[m]any geofence war-
the size of the geofence, the length of the relevant rants do not lead to arrests.” “[m]any are rendered
timeframe, or the number of users for which it will useless due to Google’s slow response time, which
produce data.” Rather, a Google Legal can take as long as six months because of the
Investigation Specialist employee reviews the Sensorvault’s size and the large number of war-
geofence warrant, consults with legal counsel, and rants that Google receives.” Second, as to war-
works with law enforcement to assuage any of rants that are issued, the data Google returns is not
Google’s concerns before turning the data over always perfect, and sometimes contains false pos-
and moving on to Step 2. itives. In fact, there are already documented
At Step 2, law enforcement contextualizes and accounts of innocent bystanders being swept into
narrows the data. During this step, law enforce- geofence warrants based solely on their proximity
ment reviews the anonymized list provided by to a crime. In short, while false negatives appear to
Google and determines which IDs are relevant. As be “more extremely rare”—given the accuracy of
part of this review, “[i]f law enforcement needs Google’s data—false positives are still an area of
additional de-identified location information for a concern.
certain device to determine whether that device is Returning to the matter at hand, the warrant here,
actually relevant to the investigation, law enforce- like any other warrant, began with an Application

Nov.-Dec. 2024 www.texaspoliceassociation.com • (512) 458-3140 29