Can Google Be Used to Prosecute Abortion Providers?
Privacy advocates fear Google will provide users' data to authorities who may try to target people seeking abortions. As authorities investigating crimes become increasingly adept, courts are still playing catch-up on restricting their access.
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Privacy advocates fear Google will provide users’ data to authorities who may try to target people seeking abortions, reports NPR.
As authorities investigating crimes become increasingly adept at using two types of controversial types of data requests, geofence warrants and keyword warrants, Google employees say that the company needs to strengthen its ability to detect how law enforcement can gather data on abortion-seekers, and fortify itself against such efforts.
Geofence warrants seek information about every device that has crossed into a defined location in a specific period of time, while keyword warrants request information on everyone who has Googled specific search terms.
Privacy experts consider the keyword search warrants a type of fishing expedition that violates user privacy under the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches. However, courts are still playing catch-up with the technology and very few cases in the U.S. have tested the legality of geofence warrants as well.
Since the U.S. does not have a national data privacy law that could ban this type of surveillance, cases are playing out in courts around the country in scattershot fashion. Meanwhile, Google’s own statistics show that it produces data for authorities about 80 percent of the time it receives requests.
