September 29, 2023 • 30 mins
Google is able to collect a lot of information about the people who use its products on their phones, including where they are at any given time. A growing number of police departments across the US are seeking to obtain this data from Google to help solve crimes. Bloomberg’s Davey Alba and Julia Love join this episode to weigh the pros and cons of using location data in law enforcement, and the privacy concerns it raises. And Travis Staab, a police detective in Arizona, shares how he and his colleagues have used the information to track down suspects.
Read more: Google User Data Has Become a Favorite Police Shortcut
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
By now, we all know Google and other tech companies
are collecting huge amounts of information about our digital and
actual lives, what we search for, what we watch and
listen to, and where we are at any given time.
In large part, that's so advertisers who pay for that
data can pester us to buy things. But Bloomberg's Davy
(00:24):
Alba and Julia Love report that this vastrophe of personal
information about millions of people is now increasingly also being
sought by police departments across the US. They're asking judges
for warrants to compel Google to turn over location and
other user data.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Google says that it receives more than sixty thousand search warrants,
and this was true in the US last year. That's
more than double the number from twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
I think these requests put Google in a difficult because
these are court orders. They're not just.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Optional and later, Mesa Arizona detective Travis Stobb tells us
how police use this information.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
It's another tool on our toolkit, and it's a welcome one.
It just gives us another avenue to turn to when
we're coming up dry on more traditional investigative techniques.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
I'm Wescsova today on the Big Take Cops cast a
Digital dragnet I asked Davy why she and Julia decided
to look into how police departments are using all this
(01:49):
information that Google collects about us.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I think we've known that Google is collecting an enormous
amount of data on each every one of us. Basically,
if you have a Google account, you are handing over
data on where you've been, what you've searched, and Google
slurps up all this data to use in a lot
(02:13):
of cases for advertising. So you have all of this
history that you're keeping with Google that's in your account,
and it just so happens that cops are also interested
in that when they are trying to solve a crime.
So we suspected that there was this match between all
(02:35):
the data that we were giving Google and users are
giving Google and the way that the cops try to
mind that data to solve these crimes that have taken place.
And we wanted to know whether cops were using this
for very serious crimes or if they were also interested
(02:57):
in this data for petty ones theft, graffiti, vandalism. And
what we found was that this practice was incredibly widespread
all over the US. Tiny police departments all over the
country are using Google data to try to solve crimes,
and the crimes weren't always necessarily serious ones. They did
(03:20):
include some of these more minor offenses as well.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
And Julia, how'd you find this out?
Speaker 3 (03:28):
If cops want to dip into Doodle's data, they have
to obtain a search warrant from a judge. The company
will not simply open up its files for any law
enforcement officer who comes knocking.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
They have to have a.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Valid court order, and so in order to do this,
police officers will write up an affidavid that explains the
crime that occurred and why they feel that Doodle might
have information that could be helpful in building out the investigation.
So we sought to get our hands on those search warrants.
(04:10):
We knew that was the best way that we could
see what cops were actually requesting.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Unfortunately, for US, search warrants are public records, so we
could actually visit the courthouses and collect them for our
reporting purposes.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Julia, When a police department gets a warrant for Google
to give the information, what exactly are they asking for?
What kind of information do they want Google to.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Give In the case of location warrants, this is all
about where a specific device was at at a particular
moment in time. Google is able to pull in information
from whyfy hotspots, the phones, GPS, sell tower connections, and
that gives them a pretty good ability to estimate where
(05:00):
a particular device was at a diven time.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Within several feet actually, and so Davey, it seems like
they're casting a pretty wide net here they are.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
The way it works is the police will give let's
say four coordinates. These are just x y coordinates on
a map, and then with these four points, they'll draw
a shape around a certain area and we'll say, okay, Google,
give me all of the devices that have been in
(05:34):
this polygon over a certain amount of time. So some
of the warrants we've seen have covered just minutes. So
when the police know when a crime has occurred, they
can say, okay, within a five minute period, tell us
who was in this area. But we've also seen law
enforcement agencies going to Google asking them for how many
(05:58):
devices were in the area for up to a week.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Julia, can you give us some examples of times where
police departments went to Google and said, we want this information.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
In one case, a woman's purse was stolen in the
parking lot of a target in Scottsdale, Arizona. In that case,
the police sought a warrant for Doodle's location data information
for people who were in that parking lot at the
time that the woman's purse was grabbed. In another case
(06:36):
that we found out of Raleigh, North Carolina, a detective
was warming up his car in the morning and he
ran into his apartment to get something, leaving the car running,
and when he came back, the vehicle had vanished with
(06:57):
some police dear inside, including a police radio. And so
the Raleigh Police Department obtained one warrant for Doodle's location
data to see who had been in the neighborhood at
the time of the trime.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
And Julia, what did the Raleigh Police Department say about
the case?
Speaker 3 (07:18):
The Raleigh Police Department said that they ultimately did not
recover that radio that they were seeking to find. They
also said they always strive to recover stolen.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Property, Dave, Even though we all have Google accounts, these
warrants don't cover, you know, tens of millions of people.
They only cover whatever devices may have been in a
particular area. At a particular time around a crime scene.
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yes, that is correct. But the pool of people that
the cops and Google are drawing this data from is
a huge pool, and that can be, you know, incredibly invasive.
Your stuff can get ensnared in the warrants, Julia.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
So Google gets all of these warrants telling them they
have to give up information. How does the company deal
with this? What's their position about all of these requestsing
you have to give up the user data of your customers.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
I think these requests put Goodle in a difficult spot because,
on the one hand, these are court orders. They're not
just optional, as a former Doodle leadal director told us.
But at the same time, the company really values safeguarding
its users privacy, and so it has to walk this
(08:37):
line between helping law enforcement with their investigations and also
not letting any detective rifle through any user's data.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
So when Google gets a warrant to hand over some information,
what do they do?
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Google receives thousands of requests from law enforcement and the
United States each year, and so they've come up with
some formulas to respond to the common requests to give
their legal specialists a roadmap to follow. Law enforcement will
request information about devices that were present near the time
(09:18):
of the crime, and Doodle will simply provide a list
of anonymous device ideas that do not reveal which person
was tied to that device. Law enforcement will carefully go
over this list and they'll identify a subset of devices
(09:39):
that they would like expanded information about to see where
the device was before and after the time of the crime,
to help them decide who they really want to focus on,
and Doodle will provide account information that's usually the name
(10:00):
that the account was registered under and an email address
for that final batch of users.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Davy Julia said earlier that Google gets thousands of these
requests for information a year. Just how many do they get?
Speaker 4 (10:16):
So?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Google says that it receives more than sixty thousand search
warrants and this was true in the US last year.
That's more than double the number from twenty nineteen, and
their company provides at least some information in about eighty
percent of cases.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
You said, there's this group of people at Google whose
job it is to do this. Who are they?
Speaker 2 (10:41):
It's a team known as the Legal Investigation Support Team
or LIS. Their whole job is to review search warrants
and subpoenas, and they try to push back on as
many as they can using what they have at their disposal.
So let's say someone misspelled a Gmail account and it's
(11:02):
gamil dot com instead of Gmail dot com. Once these
warrants are served to Google, Google does have an obligation
to respond, a legal obligation, And so when they go
through these warrants and try to sort through them and
scrutinize them, they are trying to make sure they're doing
(11:25):
it just as precisely as possible, you know, to the
letter of the law, to make sure that they can
only give up people's information when it is absolutely necessary and.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
I would say also the minimum amount of information necessary
to comply with this request.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
So Google is only one of many services that are
tracking us and gathering up our information. What about Apple
and Apple Maps, which also helps you get around and
tracks your location. Do they also give up this kind
of information in response to warrants?
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Law enforcement and experts have told us that Google is
the only company that can provide this detailed list of
which devices were present at a diven time, and Apple,
in its transparency reports discloses that it does receive some
geofence warrants, as these location warrants are known, but they
(12:19):
say that they are not capable of complying with those warrants.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
But it doesn't actually matter because a lot of people
who have iPhones have Google apps on them. So if
you think about I have to get to a friend's
birthday party and how do I get there, I'll fire
up Google Maps and see the best subway route, and
that information is something that Google can see and does have.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Google sent Bloomberg a statement in response to questions about
these warrants about user data. They said with all law
enforcement demands, including reverse warrants, they have a rigorous process
designed to protect their private see of their users while
supporting the important work of law enforcement. They said they
examine each demand for legal validity consistent with developing case law,
(13:09):
and they routinely push back against overbroad or otherwise inappropriate
demands for user data, including objecting to some demands entirely.
They said for years they've supported legislative reform to government
practices around access to user data, including proposing substantive guardrails
on access to data and limits on the overuse of
(13:31):
GAG orders, which they say contribute to a lack of transparency.
I'll talk more with Julia and Davy a little later.
After the break, a detective tells us how police use
the data Google hands over. Now, let's get a look
(13:55):
at how law enforcement uses this information in real life.
I have a stop as an officer with a Mesa,
Arizona Police Department which has sought search warrants for Google data. Travis,
can you tell me what it's like to be a
detective working a case, especially when you're running out of
avenues to pursue and you just can't quite find the
(14:16):
person who committed the crime.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
Well, every case is different, obviously, and there comes with
it a certain frustration when you're not able to get
a break in the case, and you feel a lot
of pressure both externally and internally, especially in these instances
where you have someone who continues to engage in armed
robbery after armed robbery and you want to get them
(14:39):
caught before someone gets hurt, or just stop them from
doing what they're doing. And so the ability to leverage
this Google data was a welcome addition to our toolkit
for sure.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
So tell me about a case where you use this
warrant and what happened me personally.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
It's still under investigation, but it was a late night
gun store burglary where a device is inside of a
business that's empty, that's right next to the gun store,
and so that produces a very viable lead for us
to follow up on. And I've assisted other agencies as
well with analyzing the results from their Google warrants, in
(15:23):
particular some road rage type shootings where some aspect of
the crime is captured on video, and you can compare
the video surveillance with the data you get from Google
to potentially identify the suspect. Unfortunately, my own personal experience
hasn't been as successful as others. I strike out far
(15:43):
more often than I succeed.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Can you walk us through the process of what it's
like to try to get this information from Google?
Speaker 4 (15:52):
The current process right now begins with a search warrant
to obtain device IDs that are within a set geographical area.
So when we request this data from Google, we're asking
them to search within a geo fence, and that is
a geographical area defined by latitude and longitude, typically four points.
(16:15):
It's a square around a given area. We explain the
circumstances of the crime and what we're hoping to obtain
from Google and how it will assist our investigation.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
How easy is it to get a warrant like that
from a judge.
Speaker 4 (16:32):
Here in Maricopa County. We have to really work it.
There's been some recent court rulings in case law that
shine a spotlight on these kind of warrants some privacy concerns,
and so we work with those commissioners at our initial
appearance court at the Search Warrant Center to really make
(16:52):
sure that we're keeping our scope narrow, that we're not
being overly broad, that we are doing everything we can
to ensure that we're not infringing upon the privacy of
those persons who are not involved in the crime but
are simply in the area. So we work really hard
to make sure that we tailor the geo fence in
(17:13):
such a manner that it zeros in on the area
where the crime was committed.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Has a judge ever turned you down when you ask
for one of these warrants or asked you to refine
the information.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
Yes. Probably about half of the Google geofence warrants that
I've written have undergone a refinement process after being submitted
the first time. Round and again, it's just trying to
zero in strictly on the information that we want to
obtain and keep out that extraneous information.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
All right, So you get your warrant from the judge
and you take it to Google. What are you asking
Google for in a typical case, like how do you say, hey,
I want information?
Speaker 4 (17:57):
So Google retains all this data on any device that
has an Android platform or a Google app on it,
such as the Gmail app or Google Maps. And what
we're essentially asking from Google is to provide us the
data that they keep stored within their servers that provides
(18:21):
locational data for devices that are running some sort of
Google platform or app. And their locational data is based
off of a variety of different things, whether it's the
GPS on the phone, or it's connecting to Wi Fi,
it's connecting to a cell phone tower, and it comes
(18:41):
with varying degrees of accuracy. But ultimately, what we want
from them is any device that is within this pre
defined geographical boundary, and that is the geo fence. If
we have a murder that's committed inside of a residence,
I typically four point the corners of that residence. The
(19:01):
property itself and if we have, say a getaway path,
we know that the suspect fled down the street in
a certain direction, then I'll four point the sidewalk in
the street where he fled, and we're narrowing those geographical
boundaries the geo fence so as not to overlap houses
(19:21):
of people who are uninvolved. We're looking just for that
area where the suspect was.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
So you go to Google with this information within this
geo fence, where does it go from there?
Speaker 4 (19:33):
When they return the information to us, they identified the
devices through an anonymized alphanumeric code. It's very long and
it contains absolutely zero identifying information about the account holder.
And this is to protect the privacy of those devices
that will inevitably capture that are uninvolved. So it's upon
(19:54):
us as detectives to study all the devices that have
been provided and determine which ones are most likely connected
to the crime that we're investigating, while filtering out those
that we believe are uninvolved. At that point, we write
a second search warrant for further locational data on those
(20:15):
devices that we believe are most likely involved, and that information,
when it's returned to us from Google, will show locational
data for those devices an hour prior to and an
hour after the timeframe set within an original warrant, and
it will give us locational data that falls outside of
the geo fence, and we can use this to maybe
(20:38):
determine where people go and see if these devices are
in fact involved in the manner that we originally thought.
It's further clarifying information, but at that point we still
have no account information, no identifying information on who the
actual owner is of that device. It's not until we
get the data back from that second search warrant and
(20:59):
we can further narrow down the scope of what we're
looking for. And then we write a third search warrant,
and that search warrt is the one where we get
actual account information, account data, we identify the person who
is associated to that phone.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
So has access to this kind of information changed the
way your investigations into crimes work.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
Not really. It's for me in particular. As I said before,
I haven't had a ton of luck with it. It's
another tool on our toolkit, and it's a welcome one,
but it doesn't change the fundamentals really of how we
proceed with our investigations. It just gives us another avenue
to turn to when we're coming up dry on more
(21:43):
traditional investigative techniques. We want to use it as kind
of a measure of last resort. There's other quicker avenues
of investigation that can be taken at the beginning, and
we want to go through and exhaust those first. We're
not necessarily wanted to jump onto the geofense warrant right
away when we could produce a suspect through other methods
(22:06):
a lot quicker because there is a time delay in
obtaining this information from Google, processing it, submitting the second warrant,
waiting it takes a little bit.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Are there any kind of crimes where you just don't
use this to afore.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
We've been cautious in how we apply this, making sure
that we use it for serious crimes only. We would
not want to be using this for misdemeanor crimes, lower
level offenses. You know, we're looking at felony crimes. We're
looking at part one crimes, which are going to be burglaries, arsons,
(22:42):
sex assaults, armed robberies, murders, the serious crimes. That's when
we're going to use an investigative technique like this.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
You talked a lot about how Google takes all these
measures to animize the data. But as someone who's used
this and seen it used, do you have privacy concerns
about this to a certain extent?
Speaker 4 (23:04):
I do you know my personal beliefs, Hue towards a
certain amount of privacy of the individual is very important
to me. I take it very seriously, and so when
the courts have privacy concerns, I take those seriously. It's
reassuring to me that the information that comes back to
us from Google, it's anonymized and it doesn't contain any
(23:26):
personal information whatsoever about the person whose device it is
that we've captured in this geofence. Even more to the point,
the anonymized ideas that they assign to these devices is
only good for ninety days and then it's deleted and
there's no record of it. The pace at which technology advances,
(23:49):
the courts can't keep up with it, and so it's
upon us to make sure that we're doing all that
we can to minimize those issues. And I think in
this regard the search warrants and the way Google disseminates
that data, I think it's done a really good job
of protecting the privacy of individuals in regards to this
(24:09):
investigative technique.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Detective, appreciate your time, thanks for giving us this inside view.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
Thank you very much for having me on.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
When we come back Bloomberg's Julia Love and Davey Alba
tell us about the pushback in some places against the
use of these warrants. Julia, do we have any idea
about whether this works. Does all this information in this
(24:41):
very complicated system lead to crimes being solved at a
higher rate.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
We have certainly heard success stories, but we also found
many tases where this information did not pan out for
law enforcement. With the taste of that stolen purse in Scottsdale, Arizona,
the detective told me that he decided not to proceed
because he didn't think that this tool was going to
(25:08):
pan out for him.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
We've talked to a police officer who said that they
were able to identify two suspects in a murder at
a local park.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
We spoke with one detective in Arizona who told us
about a victory that his colleague had with these geofence warrants,
and it was a case of catalytic converter theft in
a parking structure and using a geofence warrant. They were
able to find a device that was present near the
(25:41):
power box at the exact moment that the power was
shut off in the parking structure.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Davy, We talked earlier about how a lot of people's
data can wind up in one of these warrants and
these requests for information. Have they ever led to people
being wrongfully arrested?
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Yes, we do know of at least one crime from
twenty eighteen where a man in Arizona was wrongly arrested
for murder based on the location of his phone. What
actually happened in that case was the man had left
his phone in a vehicle that a friend took, and
(26:24):
then the fact that the phone was in the car
sort of pinpointed him as a possible suspect. But he
actually was not present in that case, and he was
wrongly accused and arrested.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
And what happened in that case.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
Police ultimately arrested another suspect.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
And he was ultimately cleared of charges. Yes, Davy, Is
anyone pushing back against these kinds of warrants saying that
Google shouldn't have the handover users data if the police
asked for it.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Yeah, we have spoken to law professors and privacy advocates.
It's who say that this practice is incredibly invasive and
that Google should not have this data in the first place.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
There's an important legal battle happening in Colorado. A group
of teenagers were charged with murder for an arson case
that happened there a few years ago. The police found
them through Doodle's search data for people who searched the
(27:32):
address of the house around the time of the fire.
But one of the defendant's lawyers are arguing that this
was an illegal search, and so that is posing the
first known challenge to the validity of this technique in
(27:53):
the country.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Davey, as you continue to report this story, what are
you looking for? Where do you think it goes from here?
Speaker 2 (28:01):
I think that we will see more scrutiny on these practices,
and we may see more public outcry from folks who
are concerned that they could get ensnared in these warrants.
You know, there is that question of how the public
(28:23):
will react to the increased practice of using warrants to
locate suspects. I think there's a question about how the
law will evolve to include the fact that this is
now possible so, for instance, in the case of wire tapping,
(28:44):
that is a police technique that can only be used
for very serious cases like kidnapping, murder, drug trafficking, and
the like. But there's still no federal law that exists
for regulating this kind of technique where cops can go
to Google for location and search data, so it'll be
(29:05):
interesting to see how that evolves.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Davey Julia, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Thanks for having us. It was a pleasure.
Speaker 4 (29:15):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Thanks for listening to us here at The Big Take.
It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio. For more
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Email us questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg
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(29:40):
was produced by Sam Gabauer and Christine Driscoll. Rafieol mcili
is our engineer. Our original music was composed by Leo Sidron.
I'm west Kasova. We'll be back on Monday with another
Big Take. Have a great weekend,
By now, we all know Google and other tech companies
are collecting huge amounts of information about our digital and
actual lives, what we search for, what we watch and
listen to, and where we are at any given time.
In large part, that's so advertisers who pay for that
data can pester us to buy things. But Bloomberg's Davy
(00:24):
Alba and Julia Love report that this vastrophe of personal
information about millions of people is now increasingly also being
sought by police departments across the US. They're asking judges
for warrants to compel Google to turn over location and
other user data.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Google says that it receives more than sixty thousand search warrants,
and this was true in the US last year. That's
more than double the number from twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
I think these requests put Google in a difficult because
these are court orders. They're not just.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Optional and later, Mesa Arizona detective Travis Stobb tells us
how police use this information.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
It's another tool on our toolkit, and it's a welcome one.
It just gives us another avenue to turn to when
we're coming up dry on more traditional investigative techniques.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
I'm Wescsova today on the Big Take Cops cast a
Digital dragnet I asked Davy why she and Julia decided
to look into how police departments are using all this
(01:49):
information that Google collects about us.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I think we've known that Google is collecting an enormous
amount of data on each every one of us. Basically,
if you have a Google account, you are handing over
data on where you've been, what you've searched, and Google
slurps up all this data to use in a lot
(02:13):
of cases for advertising. So you have all of this
history that you're keeping with Google that's in your account,
and it just so happens that cops are also interested
in that when they are trying to solve a crime.
So we suspected that there was this match between all
(02:35):
the data that we were giving Google and users are
giving Google and the way that the cops try to
mind that data to solve these crimes that have taken place.
And we wanted to know whether cops were using this
for very serious crimes or if they were also interested
(02:57):
in this data for petty ones theft, graffiti, vandalism. And
what we found was that this practice was incredibly widespread
all over the US. Tiny police departments all over the
country are using Google data to try to solve crimes,
and the crimes weren't always necessarily serious ones. They did
(03:20):
include some of these more minor offenses as well.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
And Julia, how'd you find this out?
Speaker 3 (03:28):
If cops want to dip into Doodle's data, they have
to obtain a search warrant from a judge. The company
will not simply open up its files for any law
enforcement officer who comes knocking.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
They have to have a.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Valid court order, and so in order to do this,
police officers will write up an affidavid that explains the
crime that occurred and why they feel that Doodle might
have information that could be helpful in building out the investigation.
So we sought to get our hands on those search warrants.
(04:10):
We knew that was the best way that we could
see what cops were actually requesting.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Unfortunately, for US, search warrants are public records, so we
could actually visit the courthouses and collect them for our
reporting purposes.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Julia, When a police department gets a warrant for Google
to give the information, what exactly are they asking for?
What kind of information do they want Google to.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Give In the case of location warrants, this is all
about where a specific device was at at a particular
moment in time. Google is able to pull in information
from whyfy hotspots, the phones, GPS, sell tower connections, and
that gives them a pretty good ability to estimate where
(05:00):
a particular device was at a diven time.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Within several feet actually, and so Davey, it seems like
they're casting a pretty wide net here they are.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
The way it works is the police will give let's
say four coordinates. These are just x y coordinates on
a map, and then with these four points, they'll draw
a shape around a certain area and we'll say, okay, Google,
give me all of the devices that have been in
(05:34):
this polygon over a certain amount of time. So some
of the warrants we've seen have covered just minutes. So
when the police know when a crime has occurred, they
can say, okay, within a five minute period, tell us
who was in this area. But we've also seen law
enforcement agencies going to Google asking them for how many
(05:58):
devices were in the area for up to a week.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Julia, can you give us some examples of times where
police departments went to Google and said, we want this information.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
In one case, a woman's purse was stolen in the
parking lot of a target in Scottsdale, Arizona. In that case,
the police sought a warrant for Doodle's location data information
for people who were in that parking lot at the
time that the woman's purse was grabbed. In another case
(06:36):
that we found out of Raleigh, North Carolina, a detective
was warming up his car in the morning and he
ran into his apartment to get something, leaving the car running,
and when he came back, the vehicle had vanished with
(06:57):
some police dear inside, including a police radio. And so
the Raleigh Police Department obtained one warrant for Doodle's location
data to see who had been in the neighborhood at
the time of the trime.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
And Julia, what did the Raleigh Police Department say about
the case?
Speaker 3 (07:18):
The Raleigh Police Department said that they ultimately did not
recover that radio that they were seeking to find. They
also said they always strive to recover stolen.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Property, Dave, Even though we all have Google accounts, these
warrants don't cover, you know, tens of millions of people.
They only cover whatever devices may have been in a
particular area. At a particular time around a crime scene.
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yes, that is correct. But the pool of people that
the cops and Google are drawing this data from is
a huge pool, and that can be, you know, incredibly invasive.
Your stuff can get ensnared in the warrants, Julia.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
So Google gets all of these warrants telling them they
have to give up information. How does the company deal
with this? What's their position about all of these requestsing
you have to give up the user data of your customers.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
I think these requests put Goodle in a difficult spot because,
on the one hand, these are court orders. They're not
just optional, as a former Doodle leadal director told us.
But at the same time, the company really values safeguarding
its users privacy, and so it has to walk this
(08:37):
line between helping law enforcement with their investigations and also
not letting any detective rifle through any user's data.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
So when Google gets a warrant to hand over some information,
what do they do?
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Google receives thousands of requests from law enforcement and the
United States each year, and so they've come up with
some formulas to respond to the common requests to give
their legal specialists a roadmap to follow. Law enforcement will
request information about devices that were present near the time
(09:18):
of the crime, and Doodle will simply provide a list
of anonymous device ideas that do not reveal which person
was tied to that device. Law enforcement will carefully go
over this list and they'll identify a subset of devices
(09:39):
that they would like expanded information about to see where
the device was before and after the time of the crime,
to help them decide who they really want to focus on,
and Doodle will provide account information that's usually the name
(10:00):
that the account was registered under and an email address
for that final batch of users.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Davy Julia said earlier that Google gets thousands of these
requests for information a year. Just how many do they get?
Speaker 4 (10:16):
So?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Google says that it receives more than sixty thousand search
warrants and this was true in the US last year.
That's more than double the number from twenty nineteen, and
their company provides at least some information in about eighty
percent of cases.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
You said, there's this group of people at Google whose
job it is to do this. Who are they?
Speaker 2 (10:41):
It's a team known as the Legal Investigation Support Team
or LIS. Their whole job is to review search warrants
and subpoenas, and they try to push back on as
many as they can using what they have at their disposal.
So let's say someone misspelled a Gmail account and it's
(11:02):
gamil dot com instead of Gmail dot com. Once these
warrants are served to Google, Google does have an obligation
to respond, a legal obligation, And so when they go
through these warrants and try to sort through them and
scrutinize them, they are trying to make sure they're doing
(11:25):
it just as precisely as possible, you know, to the
letter of the law, to make sure that they can
only give up people's information when it is absolutely necessary and.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
I would say also the minimum amount of information necessary
to comply with this request.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
So Google is only one of many services that are
tracking us and gathering up our information. What about Apple
and Apple Maps, which also helps you get around and
tracks your location. Do they also give up this kind
of information in response to warrants?
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Law enforcement and experts have told us that Google is
the only company that can provide this detailed list of
which devices were present at a diven time, and Apple,
in its transparency reports discloses that it does receive some
geofence warrants, as these location warrants are known, but they
(12:19):
say that they are not capable of complying with those warrants.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
But it doesn't actually matter because a lot of people
who have iPhones have Google apps on them. So if
you think about I have to get to a friend's
birthday party and how do I get there, I'll fire
up Google Maps and see the best subway route, and
that information is something that Google can see and does have.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Google sent Bloomberg a statement in response to questions about
these warrants about user data. They said with all law
enforcement demands, including reverse warrants, they have a rigorous process
designed to protect their private see of their users while
supporting the important work of law enforcement. They said they
examine each demand for legal validity consistent with developing case law,
(13:09):
and they routinely push back against overbroad or otherwise inappropriate
demands for user data, including objecting to some demands entirely.
They said for years they've supported legislative reform to government
practices around access to user data, including proposing substantive guardrails
on access to data and limits on the overuse of
(13:31):
GAG orders, which they say contribute to a lack of transparency.
I'll talk more with Julia and Davy a little later.
After the break, a detective tells us how police use
the data Google hands over. Now, let's get a look
(13:55):
at how law enforcement uses this information in real life.
I have a stop as an officer with a Mesa,
Arizona Police Department which has sought search warrants for Google data. Travis,
can you tell me what it's like to be a
detective working a case, especially when you're running out of
avenues to pursue and you just can't quite find the
(14:16):
person who committed the crime.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
Well, every case is different, obviously, and there comes with
it a certain frustration when you're not able to get
a break in the case, and you feel a lot
of pressure both externally and internally, especially in these instances
where you have someone who continues to engage in armed
robbery after armed robbery and you want to get them
(14:39):
caught before someone gets hurt, or just stop them from
doing what they're doing. And so the ability to leverage
this Google data was a welcome addition to our toolkit
for sure.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
So tell me about a case where you use this
warrant and what happened me personally.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
It's still under investigation, but it was a late night
gun store burglary where a device is inside of a
business that's empty, that's right next to the gun store,
and so that produces a very viable lead for us
to follow up on. And I've assisted other agencies as
well with analyzing the results from their Google warrants, in
(15:23):
particular some road rage type shootings where some aspect of
the crime is captured on video, and you can compare
the video surveillance with the data you get from Google
to potentially identify the suspect. Unfortunately, my own personal experience
hasn't been as successful as others. I strike out far
(15:43):
more often than I succeed.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Can you walk us through the process of what it's
like to try to get this information from Google?
Speaker 4 (15:52):
The current process right now begins with a search warrant
to obtain device IDs that are within a set geographical area.
So when we request this data from Google, we're asking
them to search within a geo fence, and that is
a geographical area defined by latitude and longitude, typically four points.
(16:15):
It's a square around a given area. We explain the
circumstances of the crime and what we're hoping to obtain
from Google and how it will assist our investigation.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
How easy is it to get a warrant like that
from a judge.
Speaker 4 (16:32):
Here in Maricopa County. We have to really work it.
There's been some recent court rulings in case law that
shine a spotlight on these kind of warrants some privacy concerns,
and so we work with those commissioners at our initial
appearance court at the Search Warrant Center to really make
(16:52):
sure that we're keeping our scope narrow, that we're not
being overly broad, that we are doing everything we can
to ensure that we're not infringing upon the privacy of
those persons who are not involved in the crime but
are simply in the area. So we work really hard
to make sure that we tailor the geo fence in
(17:13):
such a manner that it zeros in on the area
where the crime was committed.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Has a judge ever turned you down when you ask
for one of these warrants or asked you to refine
the information.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
Yes. Probably about half of the Google geofence warrants that
I've written have undergone a refinement process after being submitted
the first time. Round and again, it's just trying to
zero in strictly on the information that we want to
obtain and keep out that extraneous information.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
All right, So you get your warrant from the judge
and you take it to Google. What are you asking
Google for in a typical case, like how do you say, hey,
I want information?
Speaker 4 (17:57):
So Google retains all this data on any device that
has an Android platform or a Google app on it,
such as the Gmail app or Google Maps. And what
we're essentially asking from Google is to provide us the
data that they keep stored within their servers that provides
(18:21):
locational data for devices that are running some sort of
Google platform or app. And their locational data is based
off of a variety of different things, whether it's the
GPS on the phone, or it's connecting to Wi Fi,
it's connecting to a cell phone tower, and it comes
(18:41):
with varying degrees of accuracy. But ultimately, what we want
from them is any device that is within this pre
defined geographical boundary, and that is the geo fence. If
we have a murder that's committed inside of a residence,
I typically four point the corners of that residence. The
(19:01):
property itself and if we have, say a getaway path,
we know that the suspect fled down the street in
a certain direction, then I'll four point the sidewalk in
the street where he fled, and we're narrowing those geographical
boundaries the geo fence so as not to overlap houses
(19:21):
of people who are uninvolved. We're looking just for that
area where the suspect was.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
So you go to Google with this information within this
geo fence, where does it go from there?
Speaker 4 (19:33):
When they return the information to us, they identified the
devices through an anonymized alphanumeric code. It's very long and
it contains absolutely zero identifying information about the account holder.
And this is to protect the privacy of those devices
that will inevitably capture that are uninvolved. So it's upon
(19:54):
us as detectives to study all the devices that have
been provided and determine which ones are most likely connected
to the crime that we're investigating, while filtering out those
that we believe are uninvolved. At that point, we write
a second search warrant for further locational data on those
(20:15):
devices that we believe are most likely involved, and that information,
when it's returned to us from Google, will show locational
data for those devices an hour prior to and an
hour after the timeframe set within an original warrant, and
it will give us locational data that falls outside of
the geo fence, and we can use this to maybe
(20:38):
determine where people go and see if these devices are
in fact involved in the manner that we originally thought.
It's further clarifying information, but at that point we still
have no account information, no identifying information on who the
actual owner is of that device. It's not until we
get the data back from that second search warrant and
(20:59):
we can further narrow down the scope of what we're
looking for. And then we write a third search warrant,
and that search warrt is the one where we get
actual account information, account data, we identify the person who
is associated to that phone.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
So has access to this kind of information changed the
way your investigations into crimes work.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
Not really. It's for me in particular. As I said before,
I haven't had a ton of luck with it. It's
another tool on our toolkit, and it's a welcome one,
but it doesn't change the fundamentals really of how we
proceed with our investigations. It just gives us another avenue
to turn to when we're coming up dry on more
(21:43):
traditional investigative techniques. We want to use it as kind
of a measure of last resort. There's other quicker avenues
of investigation that can be taken at the beginning, and
we want to go through and exhaust those first. We're
not necessarily wanted to jump onto the geofense warrant right
away when we could produce a suspect through other methods
(22:06):
a lot quicker because there is a time delay in
obtaining this information from Google, processing it, submitting the second warrant,
waiting it takes a little bit.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Are there any kind of crimes where you just don't
use this to afore.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
We've been cautious in how we apply this, making sure
that we use it for serious crimes only. We would
not want to be using this for misdemeanor crimes, lower
level offenses. You know, we're looking at felony crimes. We're
looking at part one crimes, which are going to be burglaries, arsons,
(22:42):
sex assaults, armed robberies, murders, the serious crimes. That's when
we're going to use an investigative technique like this.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
You talked a lot about how Google takes all these
measures to animize the data. But as someone who's used
this and seen it used, do you have privacy concerns
about this to a certain extent?
Speaker 4 (23:04):
I do you know my personal beliefs, Hue towards a
certain amount of privacy of the individual is very important
to me. I take it very seriously, and so when
the courts have privacy concerns, I take those seriously. It's
reassuring to me that the information that comes back to
us from Google, it's anonymized and it doesn't contain any
(23:26):
personal information whatsoever about the person whose device it is
that we've captured in this geofence. Even more to the point,
the anonymized ideas that they assign to these devices is
only good for ninety days and then it's deleted and
there's no record of it. The pace at which technology advances,
(23:49):
the courts can't keep up with it, and so it's
upon us to make sure that we're doing all that
we can to minimize those issues. And I think in
this regard the search warrants and the way Google disseminates
that data, I think it's done a really good job
of protecting the privacy of individuals in regards to this
(24:09):
investigative technique.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Detective, appreciate your time, thanks for giving us this inside view.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
Thank you very much for having me on.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
When we come back Bloomberg's Julia Love and Davey Alba
tell us about the pushback in some places against the
use of these warrants. Julia, do we have any idea
about whether this works. Does all this information in this
(24:41):
very complicated system lead to crimes being solved at a
higher rate.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
We have certainly heard success stories, but we also found
many tases where this information did not pan out for
law enforcement. With the taste of that stolen purse in Scottsdale, Arizona,
the detective told me that he decided not to proceed
because he didn't think that this tool was going to
(25:08):
pan out for him.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
We've talked to a police officer who said that they
were able to identify two suspects in a murder at
a local park.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
We spoke with one detective in Arizona who told us
about a victory that his colleague had with these geofence warrants,
and it was a case of catalytic converter theft in
a parking structure and using a geofence warrant. They were
able to find a device that was present near the
(25:41):
power box at the exact moment that the power was
shut off in the parking structure.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Davy, We talked earlier about how a lot of people's
data can wind up in one of these warrants and
these requests for information. Have they ever led to people
being wrongfully arrested?
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Yes, we do know of at least one crime from
twenty eighteen where a man in Arizona was wrongly arrested
for murder based on the location of his phone. What
actually happened in that case was the man had left
his phone in a vehicle that a friend took, and
(26:24):
then the fact that the phone was in the car
sort of pinpointed him as a possible suspect. But he
actually was not present in that case, and he was
wrongly accused and arrested.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
And what happened in that case.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
Police ultimately arrested another suspect.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
And he was ultimately cleared of charges. Yes, Davy, Is
anyone pushing back against these kinds of warrants saying that
Google shouldn't have the handover users data if the police
asked for it.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Yeah, we have spoken to law professors and privacy advocates.
It's who say that this practice is incredibly invasive and
that Google should not have this data in the first place.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
There's an important legal battle happening in Colorado. A group
of teenagers were charged with murder for an arson case
that happened there a few years ago. The police found
them through Doodle's search data for people who searched the
(27:32):
address of the house around the time of the fire.
But one of the defendant's lawyers are arguing that this
was an illegal search, and so that is posing the
first known challenge to the validity of this technique in
(27:53):
the country.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Davey, as you continue to report this story, what are
you looking for? Where do you think it goes from here?
Speaker 2 (28:01):
I think that we will see more scrutiny on these practices,
and we may see more public outcry from folks who
are concerned that they could get ensnared in these warrants.
You know, there is that question of how the public
(28:23):
will react to the increased practice of using warrants to
locate suspects. I think there's a question about how the
law will evolve to include the fact that this is
now possible so, for instance, in the case of wire tapping,
(28:44):
that is a police technique that can only be used
for very serious cases like kidnapping, murder, drug trafficking, and
the like. But there's still no federal law that exists
for regulating this kind of technique where cops can go
to Google for location and search data, so it'll be
(29:05):
interesting to see how that evolves.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Davey Julia, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Thanks for having us. It was a pleasure.
Speaker 4 (29:15):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Thanks for listening to us here at The Big Take.
It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio. For more
shows from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen, and we'd love to hear from you.
Email us questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg
dot nem. The supervising producer of The Big Take is
Vicky Bergolina. Our senior producer is Katherine Fink. This episode
(29:40):
was produced by Sam Gabauer and Christine Driscoll. Rafieol mcili
is our engineer. Our original music was composed by Leo Sidron.
I'm west Kasova. We'll be back on Monday with another
Big Take. Have a great weekend,
Hosts And Creators
Sarah Holder
Saleha Mohsin
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