Pa. high court rules that police can access Google searches without a warrant
therecord.media
In a decision that only affects Pennsylvanians but could have privacy implications elsewhere, the state's Supreme Court ruled that police did not need a warrant to access a rape suspect's Google searches.
  • anon6789
    12·
    18 days ago

    Article seems a bit misleading after some further reading on this story. More detailed article I will quote from here.

    They did not search the suspect’s search history specifically. This was a reverse search where they had Google comb search history to find anyone searching for one particular thing.

    The argument in favor of the decision was that we should all know browsing history is not private. I don’t really agree with that, and I think this type of reverse search is actually worse than what the original shared article implied.

    PA Supreme Court is also a 5-2 Democratic majority. The one dissent was from one of the Democratic judges for any interested in such details.

    Donohoe, in her dissenting opinion, contended the Google search warrant did not target Kurtz but was issued on a “bald hunch” that evidence related to the kidnapping and rape would be discovered.

    The warrant was fatally devoid of any individualized suspicion of Kurtz or the location to be searched, she said.

    Reverse search warrants, as these are known, enable police to “identify suspects by demanding that a company comb through its huge repository of data reflecting the public’s interactions with its services,” the justice pointed out.

    Unlike traditional search warrants that target specific individuals or accounts, reverse keyword search warrants direct independent providers to scan their entire user database for specified search terms within a specified time, she noted.

    “I would hold that citizens possess a reasonable expectation of privacy in their Internet search queries under Article I, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution,” Donohoe wrote.

    Vague, but also of note:

    The justices pointed out that the Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act requires the use of a search warrant to access electronic information.

    The court made it clear its ruling was limited to general, unprotected internet use, and its result could be different if the user had taken efforts to secure some degree of privacy.

    This guy seems like a total scumbag and he got an almost 300 year sentence, so I’m fine with him being locked up, but this doesn’t seem like a great power to be turning over to police seeing how they already exploit things like license plate and driver’s license data to violate people’s privacy.

    • xylogxEnglish
      3·
      18 days ago

      I guess TLS does not count as protected:

      “The court made it clear its ruling was limited to general, unprotected internet use, and its result could be different if the user had taken efforts to secure some degree of privacy.”

      Using DDG would have avoided this?

      • anon6789
        4·
        18 days ago

        Using DDG would have avoided this?

        I think that is what we find out next. This situation shows Google is willing to provide data with a warrant even before it was judged to be legal.

        Having search be considered public record on the basis of you’re doing it where someone could see what you’re searching seems like a similar argument to saying why can’t police track your car without a warrant when you are driving on a public road.

        I think they’re really stretching their definition of expected privacy to not let this guy win this case. Again, the crime he indeed seems guilty of is bad, but rulings like this are a threat to many more people, especially as we have so many parties willing to stretch rulings like this even further than intended as it is.