A recent decision by Google to change the way it stores and accesses users’ opt-in “Location History” in Google Maps, making the data retention period shorter, and making it impossible for the company to access it, means it will no longer respond to “geofence warrants,” a controversial legal tool used by local and federal authorities to force Google to hand over information about all users within a given location during a specific timeframe, Cyrus Farivar and Thomas Brewster report for Forbes. Google’s decision to end access to location data is a major win for privacy advocates and criminal defense attorneys who have long decried these warrants. Practically all geofence warrants are targeted at Google, given its vast amount of search and location dataGeofence warrants have reportedly been used to investigate relatively minor crimes, such as a wallet stolen from a Utah hospital. Google made the move to explicitly bring an end to such dragnet location searches.
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