EFF Continues Fight Against Unconstitutional Geofence and Keyword Search Warrants: 2023 Year in Review

EFF continues to fight back against high-tech general warrants that compel companies to search broad swaths of users' personal data.
In 2023, we saw victory and setbacks in a pair of criminal cases that challenged the constitutionality of geofence and keyword searches.
These types of warrants-mostly directed at Google-cast a dragnet that require a provider to search its entire reserve of user data to either identify everyone in a particular area or everyone who has searched for a particular term.
Instead, the usual basis for the warrant is to try and find a suspect by searching everyone's data.
EFF has consistently argued these types of warrants lack particularity, are overbroad, and cannot be supported by probable cause.
In April, the California Court of Appeal held that a geofence warrant seeking user information on all devices located within several densely-populateddensely populated areas in Los Angeles violated the Fourth Amendment.
It became the first appellate court in the United States to review a geofence warrant.
EFF filed an amicus brief and jointly argued the case before the court.
In People v. Meza, the court ruled that the warrant failed to put meaningful restrictions on law enforcement and was overbroad because law enforcement lacked probable cause to identify every person in the large search area.
The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department sought a warrant that would force Google to turn over identifying information for every device with a Google account that was within any of six locations over a five-hour window.
Despite ruling the warrant violated the Fourth Amendment, the court refused to suppress the evidence, finding the officers acted in good faith based on a facially valid warrant.
This is in clear contradiction to an earlier California geofence case, although that case was at the trial court, not at the Court of Appeal.
In October, the Colorado Supreme Court became the first state supreme court in the country to address the constitutionality of a keyword warrant-a digital dragnet tool that allows law enforcement to identify everyone who searched the internet for a specific term or phrase.
In a weak and ultimately confusing opinion, the court upheld the warrant, finding the police relied on it in good faith.
In People v. Seymour, the four-justice majority recognized that people have a constitutionally-protected privacy interest in their internet search queries and that these queries impact a person's free speech rights.
Although the court found that the Colorado constitution protects users' privacy interests in their search queries associated with a user's IP address, it held that the Fourth Amendment does not, due to the third-party doctrine-reasoning that federal courts have held that there is no expectation of privacy in IP addresses.
EFF plans to make a similar argument in a Pennsylvania case in January challenging a keyword warrant served on Google by the state police.
EFF has consistently argued in court, to lawmakers, and to tech companies themselves that these general warrants do not comport with the constitution.
We have urged Google to resist these warrants, be more transparent about their use, and minimize the data that law enforcement can gain access to.
This year, at least one company has proved it is possible to resist geofence warrants by minimizing data collection.


This Cyber News was published on www.eff.org. Publication date: Sat, 23 Dec 2023 17:43:04 +0000


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