Geofence Warrants and Reverse Keyword Warrants Are Invasive
eff.org
eff.org
Is the EFF aware that 95.75% of the population of the planet does not live under the Amendments of the Constitution of the USA?
Are Geofence Warrants and Reverse Keyword Warrants Invasive? Yes. Is the reason because in 1789 someone in the US didnt like something. No.
If you're going to fight US legislation, you have to use the law to do it and that includes the US Constitution and it's amendments...
>Google Fails to Challenge Keyword Search Warrants in the U.S.
Your distinction is already acknowledged in the second[1] article linked by the original article, that Google is being uniquely worse in America, where the Fourth Amendment does actually apply.
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/04/google-fights-dragnet-...
And yet, that 95.75% has a net drain (especially among high earners and top of their fields professional) to the US, meaning that people all over the world seek and actively desire to be protected and live under the Constitution more than their countries' laws.
It must also be illegal for companies to sell this information to the government, or ideally to even store this data outside of devices controlled by the end user.
It is not unreasonable to ask who (whose mobile phones) were in an area during a riot. It is unreasonable to ask for the movements of everyone in a city for 6 months before hand. Some places (lawyers offices, health facilities etc) are particularly sensitive and warrants for them should be issued only in extreme cases (just like how it is much harder to get a warrant for a lawyers office).
None of this is different from any other warrant: asking for a search warrant for a house is one thing, asking for one for every house on a street is another.
I would support significant tightening of the US warrant system (judges are all too willing to blindly grant warrants with no actual thought or concern for citizens rights). But this is about balancing right, not one absolute right trumping another.
Would you expand on why you find this reasonable? As a city dweller, I often don’t have much choice about the routes that I take, and don’t find it reasonable that someone happening past an event of interest automatically places them under suspicion.
Don’t get me wrong; I understand why LEO finds this to be valuable, but I don’t see how this translates to being reasonable.
> But this is about balancing right, not one absolute right trumping another.
To me, “balancing” looks more like requiring a sufficiently high bar to get clearance to track individuals, and the availability of a much more invasive mechanism (geofences) does not mean that a balanced solution must include it.
I think there’s an analogy in the militarization of police departments. Some would argue this is “balancing” power between police and gangs, but there are far stronger arguments that it’s an inappropriate and dangerous solution to begin with.
To me this is no different to searching my room (my private space) when you suspect my room mate of a crime. Is it right that my privacy is invaded? No. It is sadly necessary because unfortunately, though not my fault, there might be evidence etc there? Yes.
Another analogy is if I worked somewhere and something was stolen, I would expect the police to receive my name. I am no theft, but I was in the place at the time, so it's not unreasonable that the police might want to at least try to speak to me right? I can always decline to co-operate but maybe I saw something? Or maybe a quick search reveals I am selling the same item that was stolen on my ebay account and suddenly the crime is solved? But the only way for the police to start work is to know who was there.
I also think this sort of invasion is very small: searching my person is a bigger violation, searching my dwelling too. Merely discovering I was at a place is hardly a violation at all, no one would call it that if a witness named me as there so why not a mobile phone company?
I agree 100% about the militarisation of the police though... As a brit, I wonder how much of that is just poor policy, and how much is due to a toxic mix of "the right to bear arms" and drug prohibition. What do you think?