Google is moving to end geofencing orders, the surveillance problem it largely created

Image credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

Google will soon allow users to store their location data on their devices instead of on Google’s servers, effectively ending the long-standing surveillance practice that allowed police and law enforcement to tap into Google’s vast banks of location data to identify potential criminals.

The use of so-called “geofencing commands” has been on the rise in recent years, thanks in large part to the ubiquity of smartphones coupled with data-hungry companies like Google that dump and store vast amounts of their users’ location data, which becomes a problem. obtainable under the law. Execution requests.

Police can use geolocation commands (also known as reverse geolocation commands) to ask Google to hand over information about users’ devices located in a certain geographic area at a certain time.

But critics say geofencing orders are unconstitutional and inherently broad, because such demands often also include information about completely innocent people who were… nearby at the time of the crime. until Courts cannot agree on whether geofencing orders are legallikely to pose a final challenge in the US Supreme Court.

Google announcement this week He did not mention geofencing orders Specifically, it only mentioned that moving to storing location data on their devices would give users “more control” over their data. In effect, the move forces police to request a search warrant to access that specific device instead of asking Google for the data.

Although Google is not the only company subject to geolocation warrants, it was the largest collector of sensitive location data, and the first to be exploited.

It was the practice of eavesdropping on Google to obtain users’ location data revealed for the first time In 2019. Google has long relied on its users’ location data to drive its advertising business, which during 2022 alone brought in about 80% of Google’s annual revenue, about $220 billion.

But in reality, this surveillance technology is believed to be much broader. Law enforcement later expanded its location data demands to include other companies. Microsoft and Yahoo (which owns TechCrunch) are known to receive orders for geofencing, although neither company has yet disclosed how many requests they receive for users’ location data.

In recent years, the number of legal cases involving geofencing requirements has risen dramatically.

Police in Minneapolis used a geolocation warrant to identify individuals who attended protests following the police killing of George Floyd. The overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022 raised concerns that law enforcement in states where access to abortion care is limited or where seeking an abortion is illegal could use geolocation warrants to identify those seeking care. Lawmakers then urged Google to stop collecting location data over concerns the information could be used to identify people seeking abortions.

Although the companies have said little about the number of geofence orders they receive, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo last year supported a New York state bill that would have banned the use of geofence orders throughout the state. The bill failed to become law.

Google has not said how many geofencing orders it has received in recent years. Google has published its latest (and only) disclosure of the number of geofencing orders it received in 2021 after pressure to reveal the numbers following mounting 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 the legal demands Google received. This revelation, although limited, provided a first glimpse into the sharp rise in the number of such requests, but Google did not say how often the search giant opposes these legal demands related to users’ location data – if at all.

News that Google will soon transfer its users’ location data to their devices has been met with cautious praise.

said the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which challenged the constitutionality of the geofencing orders in court In a blog post “For now, at least, we’ll take this as a win.” But the EFF noted that there are other ways in which Google could still hand over sensitive personal data to its users. Law enforcement uses similar legal prompts, called “reverse keyword” commands, to identify Google accounts that searched for a particular keyword at an appropriate time, such as before a crime was committed. Google hasn’t said whether it plans to close the loophole that allows police and law enforcement to serve so-called “reverse keyword” warrants for users’ search queries.

This does not mean that geofencing orders will disappear overnight. Google still maintains huge banks of historical location data that police can tap into at any time, until Google decides it no longer wants to keep it. While technology companies store large amounts of users’ location data, they too can be subject to similar legal requirements.

But there is hope that Google closing the door on geofencing orders will — at least in the future — significantly reduce this surveillance loophole.

in Latest transparency report In 2022, Apple said it received 13 geospatial warrants requesting its customers’ location data, but did not provide any data in return. Apple said it “does not have any data to provide in response to geofencing requests” because the data resides on users’ devices, which Apple says it does not have access to.