Geofence warrants: How police get data from all devices in targeted areas

Instead of looking for arrest warrants for a person who has a probable cause, the police have started to rely on geofence arrest warrants that retrieve information about any device that happens to be near a crime.

With these extensive data requests, the police often receive information from companies like Google and collect information about people in the region, almost all of whom are innocent. The police have used tactics for serious cases such as murder investigations and for non-violent property crimes such as burglaries.

Meanwhile, thousands of people across the country have been arrested following protests against police brutality triggered by the murder of George Floyd, who died after being detained in Minneapolis by officials. On Tuesday, BuzzFeed News reports that the Drug Enforcement Agency had been given the authority to monitor demonstrators.

Geofence warrants, sometimes referred to as reverse location search, are just one of these tools. They effectively allow the police to get information about each protester through a single request. Google, which receives most of these requests due to its location history feature, claims to only provide data from this feature that needs to be activated.

The company also said that requests without an arrest warrant will not be met and that requests for location history without an arrest warrant have been addressed. Google did not comment on whether a geofence warrant would be upheld in connection with protests.

“I hope that Google does not comply with a reverse location warrant associated with an investigation into a protest,” said Mark Rumold, lead lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Not least because of the fact that so much information needs to be disclosed about so many people involved in a First Amendment activity.”

The unprecedented number of tools that the police have to use to monitor the public in bulk has been promoted several leader to protect your privacy when participating in protests.

Police have used similar tactics in the past to identify protesters. records received from the EFF found that the University of California police issued an arrest warrant to identify photo numbers and protesters’ names at the 2017 protests at the University of California at Berkeley.

“It is so terrifying to think of how easily this kind of tool can be used to identify every single person in a protest, whether or not they have violated the law or suspected wrongdoing,” said Albert Fox Cahn, chief executive of the technology surveillance project.

Here’s a breakdown of the geofence warrants, how often they were used, and how to find out if you were part of this comprehensive surveillance tactic.

What are geofence warrants?

Geofence arrest warrants are arrest warrants that the police use to inform companies of information about devices in specific areas.

Search warrants are likely to be executed with a probable cause and bound to a specific suspect or address. Geofence guarantees enable extensive searches across areas.

If a company complies with the warrant, it must provide details of all devices in a given area at a specific time. This means that investigators not only get data about someone they would consider suspicious, but also information about everyone else who happened to be in the same place at the same time.

Many of these requests are sent to Google because the Android operating system is installed on 2.5 billion active devices more common than Apple’s iOS. Google also has apps like Google Maps that collect data on all devices on which it is installed, including Apple products.

While requests can be sent to other companies, many do not have the large reach and location data storage that Google offers.

Geofence warrant requests to Google request information from the Sensorvault database, which contains location logs from hundreds of millions of people. The database is intended for advertising purposes by Google, but is increasingly used by the police for investigations.

To meet the requirements, Google searches millions of users to determine when and where the police are investigating.

“General colonial arrest warrants empowered law enforcement officers to search for evidence house by house,” said Rumold. “You’re going from Google user to Google user and browsing their location history. It’s unprecedented.”

The results return anonymous ID numbers. The police then select certain devices that they think are suspect in order to get more accurate information.

in the a court document From December 2019, the data provided by the Sensorvault database is often more accurate than the location reports of the phone tower, according to Google. This is because the location data doesn’t just come from one source, but from a combination of GPS signals, Wi-Fi networks, Bluetooth beacons, and cellular data.

How often have they been used by investigators?

Geofence warrants are becoming increasingly popular with investigators.

Google saw a 15-fold increase in geofence requests from 2017 to 2018. The following year, the share quintupled, the company said in court documents. A April 2019 report by the New York Times found that Google received up to 180 requests a week.

Forbes reported in December 2019 In an investigation by the Office for Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, Google provided records of 1,500 phone locations from a reverse location search.

In Minnesota, KSTP-TV found that Geofence justified this more than doubled in the state from 2018 to 2019. The majority of the requests concerned non-violent crimes such as burglary. It’s in New York The Manhattan District Attorney also used search warrants Obtain information about devices used near a fight between anti-fascists and The Proud Boys, an extreme right-wing group, to identify the people involved.

Google got more than 156,000 government requests for user information in 2019, but the company doesn’t break out how many of them come from geofence warrants.

How do I know if I was swept as part of a search query?

Google should notify you when your data is collected as part of a geofence warrant and made available to law enforcement agencies. The message can come as a surprise to many innocent people, such as: Cyclist cycling past a burglar houseaccording to NBC News.

However, for warrant requests, documents can often be sealed or requested as part of a gag order, which prevents Google from informing people that their information has been made available to the police. This is sometimes done to prevent an ongoing investigation from being exposed.

How easy is it for the police to get these warrants?

You would think that it would be difficult to get a warrant that spanned an area. However, with a geofence warrant, the police don’t even need a person’s name to get a judge to sign him.

in the a police arrest warrant in Virginia in 2019The likely cause was that the suspect had a phone in hand during a bank robbery. That was all it took a judge to approve a comprehensive arrest warrant for the area, which prompted Google to provide cell phone location information for 19 people from the requested period.

A Minnesota Public Radio report found that judges signed geofence warrants in just four minutes, sometimes without the authorities ever explaining how many people were involved in the searches or how large the areas would be.

Are these arrest warrants contested by lawmakers?

No federal law prohibits or limits this type of search warrant, but government officials and lawyers question its legality.

In New York, Zellnor Myrie, a state senator, and Dan Quart, a member of the congregation, sponsored an invoice in April that would prohibit geolocation warrants. If passed, it will be the only law in the country that prevents this practice.

“It would not only prohibit reverse search warrants, but would prevent officials from bypassing a warrant and simply buying this information from a data broker,” said Cahn of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers also requests that Constitutionality of geofence warrants in one case in Virginia. The organization argues that geofence arrest warrants are unconstitutional due to the breadth of requests.

“This is not an ordinary arrest warrant. It is a general arrest warrant that purports to authorize a classic dragnet search for any Google user who is close to a bank in a suburb of Richmond on a Monday evening during rush hour “said the association Court documents. “This is the type of investigative tactic the fourth change is designed to protect against.”

The congress asked Google about its Sensorvault database and how it is passed on to third parties without specifically addressing geofence guarantees.

Can this data be misinterpreted or misleading?

Since these warrants do not bear the name of a specific person or person of interest, the resulting investigation can often be a shot in the dark against innocent people.

When the Manhattan prosecutor filed a geofence warrant, Google released data on two people who were found to be innocent bystanders near the Proud Boys and Antifa fight. The two people were never arrested, but it doesn’t end that way for everyone.

in the Investigation of the TimesAn Arizona man was arrested on suspicion of murder based on evidence from the geofence warrant that brought him close to the murder. He spent almost a week in prison before the investigators found evidence that relieved him. During this time he lost his job and his car.

Google also said in court documents that the data provided is not completely correct. The company estimates that it logs where a person is with a 68% chance of accuracy.

“As a result, if Google is forced to return data in response to a geofence request, some of the users whose locations are estimated to be within the radius described in the warrant (and whose data is therefore included in the data) are producing) were actually outside the radius, “Google said in the documents.

This can be a minor inconvenience when using Google Maps to find a store, but a serious mistake when using this information in law enforcement.

How can I prevent my data from being collected as part of this search?

The short answer is to turn off your location history, WiFi, Bluetooth, and phone signals on your device when you go to a protest or situation where you don’t want to be monitored.

In court documents, Google said the data is only collected in Sensorvault if location history is enabled. About a third of Google users have activated it, which means tens of millions of people who are potentially susceptible to these searches.

“Make this feature as useless as possible, and these warrants will stop,” said EFF Rumold.

See also: This will prevent Google Sensorvault from tracking your location on iOS or Android

But many people involved in geofence arrest warrants have been involved in activities that have little reason to believe that they are being monitored. You wouldn’t expect to be the target of surveillance when you’re cycling, stopping by the shore, or riding in your own neighborhood.

The requests do not only go to Google. The Manhattan District Attorney’s warrant was also sent to companies like Lyft and Uber. Apple doesn’t get as many reverse location requests as Google because location data isn’t stored the same way as Sensorvault.

And even if the police don’t request location data from Google or other technology companies, they can always get this information from data brokers. Location data brokers have offered information about the movement of people to persecute COVID-19, and the data can be used by law enforcement in the same way.

Data brokers get location data from seemingly harmless apps like weather services and games, a detail that is often hidden in normally unread privacy policies.

In February, The Wall Street Journal reported The federal authorities have turned to location data brokers to buy this information instead of receiving a warrant for it. A The Gizmodo report outlined the paths Your phone data is collected by advertisers, tied to your identity and made available to the police.

The way things are set up without having a phone or having your device in airplane mode all the time is always at risk of being monitored by your device.