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Minneapolis Police have obtained a search warrant ordering Google to turn over batches of account data for saboteurs accused of instigating violence following the murder of George Floyd last year, TechCrunch reported.
The death of Floyd, a black man killed by a white policeman in May 2020, has prompted thousands of people to demonstrate peacefully across the city. But violence quickly erupted, which police say began with a masked man seen in a viral video using an umbrella to smash the windows of an auto parts store in south Minneapolis.
The AutoZone store was the first of a dozen buildings across the city that were set on fire in the following days.
The search warrant required Google to provide the police with account data of anyone who was “in the geographic area” of AutoZone when the violence began on May 27, two days after Floyd’s death.
So-called geolocation guarantees – or reverse positioning orders – are often directed at Google in large part because the search and advertising giant collects and stores huge geolocation databases for the billions of website owners. accounts that have a running “location history”.
Geofencing orders allow police to broadcast a digital grid at crime scenes and require tech companies to obtain the tapes of anyone who has entered a geographic area at any given time, but critics say the orders are unconstitutional because they also collect information about the accounts of innocent passers-by.
TechCrunch learned of the existence of a search warrant for Saeed Abdullah, a Minneapolis resident, who received an email from Google stating that his account information was the subject of a warrant and would be turned over to police.
But Abdullah said he had played no role in the violence and was only in the area to film protests when the violence started in AutoZone.
The memo says police requested “anonymous” account data from Google on any phone or device near the AutoZone store and parking lot between 5:20 p.m. and 5:40 p.m. PST on May 27, when dozens of people were at rallies in the area.
Minneapolis Police spokesman John Elder, citing an ongoing investigation, did not respond to specific questions about the warrant, including why the warrant was issued.
According to police testimony, the protests were relatively peaceful until noon on May 27, when a masked man carrying an umbrella began smashing the windows of the AutoZone store, located across from the Minneapolis Police District, where hundreds of protesters had gathered, and there were also videos of protesters facing the man.
Civil liberties groups have criticized the use of search warrants on the network, and the United States Civil Liberties Union has said the geographic fence justified “bypassing constitutional controls on police surveillance.”
A Virginia district court said geographic arrest warrants violated the Constitution because the majority of people whose data was collected would have “nothing at all” about the crimes under investigation.
Reports from last year indicated that people who had nothing to do with the crime had simply been closely involved.
“NBC News” reported the case of a resident of Gainesville, Florida who Google told his account information would be disclosed to police investigating the burglary, but the resident was able to prove he did not. had no connection with the burglary. , thanks to an application on his phone that tracks his activity.
And in 2019, Google gave federal agents investigating multiple arson attacks in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, nearly 1,500 user records in response to a geographic sovereignty order considered one of the biggest hijackings of account data. nowadays.
But lawmakers are starting to hold back. New York state lawmakers last year introduced a bill that would pass, banning geographic fence orders statewide, citing the risk of police targeting protesters.
Rep. Kelly Armstrong of the New Jersey Republican Party interviewed Google CEO Sundar Pichai at a House subcommittee hearing last year.
“People would be terrified to learn that law enforcement could get public orders and get information from everyone everywhere,” Armstrong said.
Abdullah told TechCrunch that he had several videos documenting the protests that day and that he had hired a lawyer to try to stop Google from providing his account information to the Minneapolis Police Department.
“The police assumed that everyone in that area that day was guilty,” he said, “if someone did something criminal, the police should not prosecute the whole group. . “
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