Image: Pixabay

Police across the country have been attempting to use Google data and  other information from social networks to help them solve cases. One recent story  about the Raleigh Police Department shows how they have been using  Google data to track down suspects, but in order to do it, they had to  cast a wide net, obtaining information on all active users near at least  four different crime scenes. 

Ultimately, police were only able to solve one of these cases with  the data that they obtained, but in the process, they violated the  privacy of tens of thousands without them even knowing. In many cases,  the fine print of these warrants restrict Google from making their  customers aware of the searches, and this even applies to innocent users  who were caught up the surveillance net.

 City and county officials told WRAL that this is a “natural evolution of criminal investigative techniques.” However, legal experts say that this is an unprecedented move that puts the privacy of many innocent people at risk.

Jonathan Jones, a former Durham prosecutor pointed out that if Google has your info, law enforcement probably does also.  “We are willingly sharing an awful lot of our lives with Google,  but do people  understand that in sharing that information with Google, they’re also  potentially sharing it with law enforcement?” Jones said. 

Nathan Freed Wessler, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, warned about  the potential dangers of using the technology this way.  

“From an average smartphone user’s perspective, it’s a little  surprising once you start to learn the full scope of information about  our locations and whereabouts and activities that companies like Google  hold. At the end of the day, this tactic unavoidably risks getting  information about totally innocent people. Location information is  really revealing and private about people’s habits and activities and  what they’re doing,” Wessler said.

Through GPS data, Google knows your every move, which could be  helpful to police, but it could also create a dystopian nightmare for  everyday people. The warrant below, obtained during a murder investigation in 2015,  provided specific details about how the data will be collected and  analyzed. 

Image: Document Cloud

 The warrant below, also obtained during a murder investigation, this  time in 2016, allows police to obtain all cell phone data within 150  meters of a specific target, which could be thousands of people in a  large city with tall buildings. This could also include people who drove  by the location within the hours that the warrant allows. 

Image: Document Cloud

 Google’s most recent transparency report  revealed that the government forced them to hand over information with  5,200 different warrants, and the company followed through with giving  them information about 81% of the time. Out of all of those requests and  all of that privacy violated, just four cases were solved using Google  data.

Last week, I wrote an article  comparing results from Google and Duck Duck Go and showed that in  addition to tracking you, Google also provides a far inferior search  engine. Google became the most popular search engine on the web because it  connected people with the links that were close to their searches while  offering up a wide variety of different sources, but now it is obviously  far past time to move onto more trusted platforms. 

In the early days of  the internet, search engines and service providers like youtube acted  as a gateway to the world, but over the years the most powerful of these  companies have increasingly begun to act as gatekeepers, caving into  pressure from the government. 

---

I wrote this on my blog @ https://themindunleashed.com/2018/03/police-obtained-warrants-demanding-info-on-all-google-users-near-four-crime-scenes.html

---

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY:

---

---

My name is John Vibes and I am an author and researcher who organizes a number of large events including the Free Your Mind Conference. I write for numerous alternative media websites, including The Free Thought Project @tftproject and The Mind Unleashed. In addition to my first book, Alchemy of the Timeless Renaissance, I have also co-authored three books with Derrick Broze @dbroze : The Conscious Resistance: Reflections on Anarchy and Spirituality, Finding Freedom in an Age of Confusion and Manifesto of the Free Humans

I just won a 3-year-long battle with cancer, and will be working to help others through my experience, if you wish to contribute to my medical bills, consider subscribing to my podcast on Patreon. 

Or donate via:

Bitcoin:  35ZJyqPZqJi7tTCKtMddtnKaGDBnhLEaez
Ethereum: 0xbda87e26ed90e260ed6c101f57a409ce3c90c116
DASH:  XyE2YME982TXHcQo6HZYyWr37R1pnBC3iT