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Police in a small suburban town of 50,000 people just outside Minneapolis, Minnesota, have won a court order requiring Google to determine who has used its search engine to look up the name of a local financial fraud victim.
The court order demanding such a massive search is perhaps the most expansive one we've seen unconnected to the US national security apparatus and, if carried out, could set an Orwellian precedent in a bid by the Edina Police Department to solve a wire-fraud crime worth less than $30,000.
Investigators are focusing their probe on an online photo of someone with the same name of a local financial fraud victim. The image turned up on a fake passport used to trick a credit union to fraudulently transfer $28,500 out of an Edina man's account, police said. The bogus passport was faxed to the credit union using a spoofed phone number to mimic the victim's phone, according to the warrant application. (To protect the victim's privacy, Ars is not publishing his name that was listed throughout the warrant signed February 1 by Hennepin County Senior Judge Gary Larson.)
The warrant demands Google to help police determine who searched for variations of the victim's name between December 1 of last year through January 7, 2017. A Google search, the warrant application says, reveals the photo used on the bogus passport. The image was not rendered on Yahoo or Bing, according to the documents. The warrant commands Google to divulge "any/all user or subscriber information"—including e-mail addresses, payment information, MAC addresses, social security numbers, dates of birth, and IP addresses—of anybody who conducted a search for the victim's name.
Source: ArsTechnica
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday March 21 2017, @06:38PM
Judge's name is Gary Larson! NICE!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday March 21 2017, @06:44PM (13 children)
I already know which political ideologies this viewpoint is going to rub the wrong way, but this is a perfectly reasonable application of a constitutional search for a suspect with appropriate legal controls along the way.
It won't necessarily lead to finding a suspect or particularly useful evidence in court against whomever they do find, but it seems like perfectly reasonable policework to me.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 21 2017, @07:23PM (6 children)
There are enough real things to criticise and worry about, getting in a fuss about a non-thing is counterproductive.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Tuesday March 21 2017, @08:06PM (5 children)
But in this case, it's more like asking all the shops down the street if any customer talked about bayonets with them.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 3, Informative) by tibman on Tuesday March 21 2017, @08:11PM (2 children)
Seems like a great way to help you find suspects.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Tuesday March 21 2017, @10:56PM (1 child)
OK, how about this.
It's akin to going to a library and demanding someone's book and video history.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @01:05AM
Actually it's akin to asking for the history of who checked out a specific book.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @08:17PM
IANAL but that sounds like perfectly legitimate police detective work to me. How would you propose they investigate a crime? By consulting a psychic?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 22 2017, @08:26PM
They're saying they "know it's Google," not asking Yahoo, Bing, or any others.
So, if the perp is any kind of clever, he "found" a library card and logged in to a public computer with it while wearing enough obscuring clothing to thwart the security cameras, in a town neither he nor the mark lives in.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday March 21 2017, @09:01PM (3 children)
I'm unclear how political ideologies will affect one's reaction to this warrant; or to your assertion that it is perfectly reasonable.
My own reaction, initially, almost instinctively, is negative towards both the judge and the law enforcement requesting this information. That reaction is the opposite of what I would have had, say, two decades ago. This is conditioning resulting from having seen corruption, abuses of power, and other bad behavior in all levels of government, including judicial and law enforcement resulting in general distrust.
On further consideration, I'm not sure that this warrant is a bad thing. It asks for a narrow range of time. For searches of variations of a specific person's name. The results of that would be (hopefully) properly investigated in an effort to find the true perpetrator of the crime. Hopefully not to manufacture a case, to ensure that someone, somewhere is prosecuted, even if no real case can be built.
One potentially negative effect that concerns me is that this would seem to open the floodgates to local law enforcement requests to Google and other internet sites for information. The requests will become larger and larger in scope. And the basis for them will become less and less substantial. Soon law enforcement will begin to think that all police investigation begins and ends with a computer search -- like on TV.
Coming Soon to a warrant near you: police getting warrants for information from Google to settle personal scores.
Maybe Google, FaceTwit, Bing, Yahoo and other large data should be moved into a branch of the government.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday March 21 2017, @09:10PM (2 children)
So, even though this has nothing to do with political ideology, I'd still say the chances you're a libertarian are one hundred quadrillion percent.
And that your objections are silly. A judge duly authorizing a search for a specific piece of related information in the course of an investigation of a specific crime is a slippery slope to jack shit.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Wednesday March 22 2017, @04:42AM (1 child)
This is going to return some vague information associated with an IP assigned to a person or persons who may or may not have been involved in the crime. It feels like issuing a general warrant to search everyone's garage in the city, because a lawnmower got stolen last weekend.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday March 22 2017, @01:53PM
Guess what? All sorts of components of investigations return results that may or may not have something to do with the perpetrator.
You gonna object to doing a quick check on someone because their DNA was found at a murder scene? There's literally millions of ways that could happen without them being the murderer, but it's what we in the head-outside-of-ass community call a "clue".
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday March 21 2017, @11:12PM (1 child)
I already know which political ideologies this viewpoint is going to rub the wrong way,
Looks like a lawyer for the EFF is taking issue with it (not necessarily on behalf of the EFF though). I don't get the impression they lean the direction you are implying.
Their complaint is that it resembles a "general warrant" in that it doesn't name the person whose google-records are to be searched.
I agree with you, though. It doesn't seem much different than asking for a surveillance tape from location x,y at time z. That doesn't name a person, either.
(I fully support the EFF and even donate periodically. I didn't look into deep enough to know whether they've taken a stance on this issue or if it's just this lawyers' personal opinion)
(Score: 1) by tftp on Wednesday March 22 2017, @05:06AM
Their complaint is that it resembles a "general warrant" in that it doesn't name the person whose google-records are to be searched.
The warrant does name the person whose records are to be searched - and that "person" is Google. The records belong to Google. Can't be any more specific.
If the found information creates leads (such as repeated fetches from the same IP in the city where the deed was done,) then *that* person or the IP will be searched separately and on another warrant.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @06:46PM (3 children)
So what makes disclosing such a thing, assuming it can be done at all, "Orwellian?" That Google might retain such data? That in order to solve a crime a warrant is signed asking for release of the information, assuming it is held?
Yes, yes, slippery slope. And I'm not saying one might not exist here. But the notion that such a thing shouldn't be done, "to solve a wire-fraud crime worth less than $30,000," implies that there's some magic number that would suddenly make it more worthwhile. That justice should be invoked according to financial severity. *That's* the real slippery slope, friend.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @10:14PM (1 child)
The problem with declaring the slippery slope a fallacy is that, outside of the world of theory and academic rhetoric, a lot of slopes turn out to be slippery, and this is usually practically demonstrated once you've fallen halfway down and you're too late to avoid the bottom. In such situations the only real way to keep from falling is to be smart enough not to get on the slope in the first place, no matter what some textbook insists is accurate for abstract arguments and philosophical logic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @05:49AM
Textbooks don't insist that all slippery slope arguments are fallacies, but that doesn't stop morons from acting like every slippery slope argument is a fallacy even in situations where history shows that slippery slopes do exist.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday March 22 2017, @04:45AM
Like how a purse snatching became the basis for mass surveillance? Is that the slippery slope you are poo-pooing?
https://www.wired.com/2013/10/nsa-smith-purse-snatching/ [wired.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @06:59PM (9 children)
My initial reaction was "ugh not more dragnet orwellian crap" but it took only a few seconds to transition to "ok, signed by a judge so this is the same as any other search warrant except on the net". How admissible the evidence is will be another question, but I don't see any issue with the search.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @07:06PM (7 children)
Yeah, same here. This is due process in action. I'm actually a bit stunned. The system is working as intended without any shady parallel construction or NSA databases or traffic analysis or TLAs running pedo sites or Googtwitface selling the info or just rolling over and handing it over. (That we know of.)
Move along??
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 21 2017, @07:15PM (6 children)
Agreed, but can we pause for a moment on the request that Google turn in "Social Security Numbers" and even birth dates, alongside the expected email/IP/MAC addresses.
That Google would be expected to have linked the SSN of someone doing an image search is highly troubling, and the whole SSN concept should be revised quickly...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @07:31PM (2 children)
Yep agreed, Google should only return an IP address and law enforcement should then use that to find their next clue.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 21 2017, @09:12PM (1 child)
If Google has other information associated with a person / IP address / browser cookies / etc that performed a search, why shouldn't those be disclosed?
Presumably, if you can trust law enforcement, this information will be used in an investigation to locate the perpetrator of a crime. And used for no other purpose.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday March 21 2017, @10:02PM
First, let me say in general that I agree a warrant is justified here, and I don't see a problem handing over some search data. But...
If Google has other information associated with a person / IP address / browser cookies / etc that performed a search, why shouldn't those be disclosed?
I suppose it depends on the scope. They specify searches over a 5-week period, which is a good limitation. If that results in 10 suspects, great. If that results in personal data from 10,000 people being given to the police in bulk, is it still justified?
Presumably, if you can trust law enforcement, this information will be used in an investigation to locate the perpetrator of a crime. And used for no other purpose.
It's disturbing enough that Google might have this much information in the first place. But even if you trust law enforcement to "do the right thing" with the data, isn't it potentially a major security risk to give out that amount of personal data? Even if you trust your police department, they could accidentally do all sorts of things with this data, or it could accidentally fall into the wrong hands.
My inclination is that a warrant like this can't be a "fishing expedition," to use a classic legal term. Get Google to tell the police how many such searches it had first -- if it's a very small number, the scope of the warrant is probably justified. If it's 10,000 people, the police should be required to narrow down that search a bit more, perhaps by being given a smaller subset of data on the searches first. Or, have Google cooperate with police to search the data directly, which can narrow down the focus and just give the police a smaller number of records that are likely more relevant.
I'm pretty sure if the police walked into a bank with a warrant and said, "Give us a print-out of all financial transactions for this 5-week period for 10,000 customers meeting criteria X," there'd be some legal backlash. Yes, it's just "customer data," but it's sensitive and I don't think it should be handed over in bulk to law enforcement without justification. If your warrant narrows the scope to a reasonable number of suspects, then maybe you get more than a list of names or whatever. (And maybe the 5-week time limitation will be sufficiently narrow, but that's unclear until you actually know what Google turns up.)
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 21 2017, @07:33PM
Google still shows me adverts in a language which is neither one that I understand, nor is an official language in the country where I live - so I'm still fairly happy that it doesn't appear to know much about me. I've only ever typed my ID number into HTTPS forms for known trusted 3rd parties (mostly governmental, or banking), so I'd be very surprised if google knew that.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday March 21 2017, @08:16PM
I don't find it that troubling. Plenty of people have google accounts (and other online services) where they provide phone numbers, email addresses, irl addresses, birth dates, and all kinds of information. What i would find troubling is that information being given to anyone without a (public!) court order.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @08:33PM
IANAL and I haven't seen the warrant but I suspect the gist of the request is that Google turn over all relevant personally identifiable information on those doing a google search on the victim. It doesn't necessarily mean that google actually has such information, only that they need to turn it over if they have it. On the other hand, I would think it a bit disturbing if google actually was collecting SSN, birth dates, etc. on people doing google searches, no matter what they were searching for. But that seems to me to be a substantially different matter from turning over whatever they have which is related to this police investigation.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Wednesday March 22 2017, @04:47AM
So let's say a judge signs a warrant to search every home in the city for goods stolen in the last month. That's all cool right?
This is a dragnet search, not a particularized search.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @07:34PM (2 children)
There is zero need to keep any search info associated to N up or person. This shows that google for all its great talk is galati get all of our privacy for thief ad softwRe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @03:41AM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @10:56AM
So this is not NEWS then. This is the new norm. Everyone should expect the cops to ticket you, since you exceeded the speed limits while driving with warez or google maps. Google that ultimate red light camera!
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Tuesday March 21 2017, @09:37PM (1 child)
A warrant was applied for and signed by a judge. The warrant is broad in scope and novel in its application. It's reasonable to be scared if this becomes the new normal.
That said, this isn't over. Google can (and almost certainly will) move to quash the warrant. This will almost certainly hit (possibly multiple layers) of appellate courts before the warrant is honored.
I'm not going to panic until and unless Google loses those appeals.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday March 22 2017, @04:49AM
Honestly, I'll be surprised if Google fights it. I agree with the first paragraph though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @09:39PM
It looks like a reasonable request.
Not sure if it is reasonable for the answer to be anything but we don't keep that sort of stuff.
Seems like Google should be compensated for their work here.
There is nothing is the warrant to cover that.
Does Google's request portal cover this issue?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @11:01PM (9 children)
Unreasonable search and seizure.. There goes the 4th.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @01:35AM (8 children)
What exactly do you find unreasonable about this? To help you out, this is the full text of the Fourth Amendment:
It looks to me like there is ample evidence to support probable cause (i.e., it appears that someone had money fraudulently transferred out of their bank account using a fake passport photo and a spoofed phone number). The warrant gives particular information on what specifically they are looking for and where they ae looking for it. So, what do you see here as being unreasonable about this search?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Wednesday March 22 2017, @04:51AM (7 children)
Someone in your county is growing pot illegally. A warrant to search all homes would meet your interpretation of the 4A.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @06:52AM (5 children)
You (and the person who modded you up) don't seem to understand the idea of probable cause. Probable cause does not mean that a crime might have occurred. It doesn't even mean that a crime is likely to have occurred. Probable cause typically means that there is an actual identifiable complaining victim that has standing and the police have credible evidence that the place to be searched has evidence that is material to the case. This is why judges don't sign warrants for the police to go on fishing expeditions because they think that a crime is likely to have occurred; they need more than just a hunch to produce a warrant.
Now, in this particular case, they had a complaining victim who suffered actual harm (they lost a substantial amount of money from their bank account). By contacting the bank they determined that the "passport photo" used to complete the transaction likely came from a google search on the victim's name. I'm guessing that Douglas has a unique enough name so that the scope of the warrant will be very limited (i.e., they want information on who made a search for images associated with a particular name during a particular time frame). In other words, they are not looking for google searches for Douglas Jones or Douglas Smith but for Douglas <Something or other> which is unique enough that it will stand out as peculiar in google's records.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday March 22 2017, @07:53AM (4 children)
Except they are asking for the searches of an entire city. Back in film days, it would be like asking every photo processor to turn over a set of all negatives.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ticho on Wednesday March 22 2017, @10:13AM
No, they are asking to see records of exactly one private entity (Google). Sounds reasonable to me.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday March 22 2017, @06:44PM (2 children)
No, they're asking ONE photo processor (Google) who they ALREADY KNOW is in possession of the photo they're looking for (or at least one that's very similar).
Google is not a fucking public utility. It is not public infrastructure. It is not a city. It is ONE BUSINESS. One made of almost pure distilled evil, but a single business nonetheless.
People like you are why the Internet as we know it is dying. People who don't see the difference between building a website and building a Facebook or Google page. THIS is the difference. If it's just a page on someone else's platform, YOU DON'T OWN IT. You don't own your profile, you don't own your searches, you don't own your inbox, you don't own anything. Google does. And they can do damn near anything they want with it.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday March 23 2017, @02:54AM (1 child)
The question you aren't asking, is should the be able to do anything they damn well want? This is a matter of law, not technology. Anyway, if you had read my posts, you would know that I'm keenly aware of the third party doctrine, and, you may not realize it, but if you are building your website on a shared host, VPS, some cloud service, whatever, that too probably falls prey to the third party doctrine because you don't actually own the hardware.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday March 23 2017, @02:39PM
I did ask that question, the answer is absolutely not, but this isn't "anything they damn well want." They certainly should be able to hand over their own information about their own servers in response to a lawfully approved request as part of a legitimate investigation.
They perhaps shouldn't be able to sell that information to anyone who wants it...but they already do that. I don't see why police officers with a warrant should be more restricted than Snakeoil & Scumbag LTD.
Yeah, that's why my servers are in my living room. My hardware on my property using my connectivity.
But I'm not sure you're *entirely* correct either -- A VPS I would actually expect could be treated the same as hardware that you own. You pay for exclusive access to that "machine", much like how your apartment is considered your property when it comes to police searches, even though it's technically owned by your landlord. Might depend on the details of the contract though.
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Wednesday March 22 2017, @02:27PM
While on the surface I don't like this warrant I find it is at least easier to understand if one instead views it as something more physical, sorry no good car analogy. Lets say that instead of google we have a storage unit company, and instead of a warrant for info on who searched for something it is a warrant for a stolen item. Would the police be able to get a search warrant for all storage units at one location of the storage unit company for said item or would they need some more information to justify the warrant or narrow it to a specific storage unit. Actually when looking at it like this it seems that this ruling is pretty shitty. I think any sane judge would say that the police need to do more foot work to narrow down the search in this case so that they aren't opening every storage unit and digging through everyone's shit (yes if you have you stuff in a storage unit it is likely shit and you should get rid of it).
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @02:54PM
Duckduckgo
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday March 22 2017, @05:02PM
Orwellian doesn't mean law enforcement getting information. It means getting information in secret. So while the FISA court secretly authorizing surveillance of suspected terrorists is Orwellian, a public court publicly authorizing a narrow search is not. Just one more example of non-technical people completely misunderstanding technical people when we try to explain why certain surveillance powers applied to computers are a really bad idea.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?