Law enforcement agencies have been increasingly turning to Google to access the company’s location data. According to the New York Times, Phoenix police have arrested a suspect in a murder case. The suspect was identified after officers used a search warrant to force Google to provide them with information about all devices found near the crime scene. Those who work for Google say the company doesn’t always respond to warrants requesting access to location data for a single device.
Police are particularly excited about the prospect of using location data to find suspects. But they also know that they can’t arrest someone just because they show up in Google’s database. The company’s Sensorvault contains location information covering hundreds of millions of devices, going back almost 10 years. When a request comes in from authorities, it typically seeks information about devices that appear in a specific location at a specific time.
Authorities say only Google can provide them with that kind of information. They note that Apple says it doesn't have the capabilities to provide such location data. But one intelligence analyst says that based on his experience, Google has the location data for most Android phones and even some iPhones.
The information provided by Google not only helps police identify suspects, but can also lead them to witnesses who saw or heard something important about a crime. Despite the apparent usefulness of the Sensorvault database, some Google employees point out that the database was not created to serve the needs of law enforcement and could produce information that is inaccurate.
But the increased number of requests Google receives can mean it takes authorities a long time to get access to the information they want. A Google employee says he received 180 requests in one week for information from the Sensorvault database.
Legal experts also note that innocent people are also included in the location database. While information from Google is sealed in some states, in others the data can be obtained by the press and an innocent person could be wrongly linked to a crime.
It is not known how many of these warrants have resulted in an arrest or conviction. A senior prosecutor working for Washington state, Gary Ernsdorff, has dealt with several of these warrants and notes that the data from Google “does not reveal the answer, saying this guy is the culprit.” Suspects should be investigated in any case, and Ernsdorff adds that “We are not going to convict anyone just because Google indicates they were in a place.”.
