In the case of Seymour v. Colorado, Denver police executed a search warrant that required Google to provide the IP addresses of anyone who had searched for...
  • smeg ( smeg@feddit.uk ) English
    26·
    3 years ago

    the police acted in good faith, meaning the evidence will be allowed in court despite the warrant being legally flawed

    I have no knowledge (or particular interest) in USA laws, but I guess that judges making this decision is a statement of future intent. I guess if you don’t want to be tracked then don’t use services which track you!

      • TWeaK ( TWeaK@lemm.ee ) English
        17·
        3 years ago

        The issue here is not that they are required to reveal search history of suspects, the issue is that the police is browsing the search history of everyone in order to find a suspect. That’s not what warrants are for and violates the constitutional rights of nearly everyone they searched.

      • roguetrick ( roguetrick@kbin.social ) 
        7·
        3 years ago

        Opposite actually. The court decision says that all future reverse keyword search warrants in Colorado will have their evidence thrown out. This one, however, didn’t have precedent so the police acted in good faith.

  • roguetrick ( roguetrick@kbin.social ) 
    7·
    3 years ago

    I am conflicted on how I feel about that. Obviously information dragonets are bad because they’re specifically designed to produce false positives. In this case, however, they produced a definite positive that wouldn’t have been achieved otherwise.

    Edit:

    The good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule provides that “evidence
    obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment should not be suppressed in
    circumstances where the evidence was obtained by officers acting in objectively
    reasonable reliance on a warrant issued by a detached and neutral magistrate, even
    if that warrant was later determined to be invalid.” Gutierrez, 222 P.3d at 941; see
    also Leftwich, 869 P.2d at 1272 (holding that Colorado’s good-faith exception,
    35
    codified in section 16-3-308, C.R.S. (2023), is “substantially similar” to the Supreme
    Court’s rule). The exception exists because there is little chance suppression will
    deter police misconduct in cases where the police didn’t know their conduct was
    illegal in the first place. Leon, 468 U.S. at 918–19. In such cases, “the social costs of
    suppression would outweigh any possible deterrent effect.

    But the good-faith analysis in Gutierrez is distinguishable. True, we held
    there that the good-faith exception did not apply, but we had already recognized
    that individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their financial records
    when Gutierrez was decided. Id. at 933 (citing numerous cases and statutes
    establishing that an individual’s financial records are protected under Colorado
    law). So, the police were on notice that a nexus was required between a crime and
    Gutierrez’s individual tax records. See id.

    38
    ¶70 By contrast, until today, no court had established that individuals have a
    constitutionally protected privacy interest in their Google search history. Cf.
    Commonwealth v. Kurtz, 294 A.3d 509, 522 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2023) (holding that, under
    the third-party doctrine, the defendant did not have a reasonable expectation of
    privacy in his search history). In the absence of precedent explicitly establishing
    that an individual’s Google search history is constitutionally protected, DPD had
    no reason to know that it might have needed to demonstrate a connection between
    the alleged crime and Seymour’s individual Google account.

    In essence, the court is saying that this is the one and only time this will be allowed in Colorado.

    https://www.courts.state.co.us/userfiles/file/Court_Probation/Supreme_Court/Opinions/2023/23SA12.pdf

    • TWeaK ( TWeaK@lemm.ee ) English
      14·
      3 years ago

      It wasn’t specific to an individual criminal, though. Police aren’t allowed to get warrants for fishing expeditions, they’re supposed to find leads themselves and then get a concise warrant to evidence to confirm that. They searched people they had no right to search, and violated their constitutional rights.

        • rgb3x3 ( rgb3x3@beehaw.org ) English
          19·
          3 years ago

          Would you still feel the same way if the DMV was set on fire and you were a suspect because you’d searched for directions to the place?

          Or if you had searched that home address because you were looking for homes in the area to compare with what you wanted?

          It shouldn’t be enough to make a Google search to assume an individual is a suspect in a crime.

          • TWeaK ( TWeaK@lemm.ee ) English
            9·
            3 years ago

            Yes exactly. This story has echos of the guy who was hounded by police (and maybe even charged and convicted?) because he took a different route while cycling and rode past a house where a crime was committed. That, too, was Google.

    • Showroom7561 ( Showroom7561@lemmy.ca ) English
      1·
      3 years ago

      Yeah, it’s a specific enough request that I don’t see any problem here.

      Although, why the IP address? I would imagine most people using Google products would be logged into Google accounts. They’d probably know the exact account who made the search, rather than a vague IP that could belong to multiple people in.

        • Showroom7561 ( Showroom7561@lemmy.ca ) English
          1·
          3 years ago

          Fair enough. I don’t think it’s common for someone to be doing Google searches without having an account linked to other services, though.

          Anyone using YouTube, Gmail, etc. would be logged in.

          And everyone with an android phone who uses google search would very likely be linked to an account, for example.

          I just thought it would cut to the chase for Google to provide account holder info and not just IP addresses.

          Then again, the arsonists could have very well used any of the other search engines to look up the address. So… maybe police aren’t aware that other search options exist.