Google , like other tech companies, often receives requests from law enforcement agencies to access their users ' data , and now the tech giant has decided to charge for this process.
As reported by The New York Times, the prices for providing access to user data will range from $45 for a subpoena, $60 for phone calls and about $245 for a search warrant. There will also be fees for other legal matters.
The revenues generated from these charges will be used to cover the company's expenses for personnel and the resources needed to provide subpoenas and warrants.
Both Google and other Silicon Valleydo not charge law enforcement agencies when they request access to their customers' data, although the law allows them to do so.
But now Google's decision to charge for access requests will have a big impact on how the company and law enforcement agencies deal with legal demands in the future
Until recently, Silicon Valley companies did not ask any compensation from authorities when they gave them access to any information.
If this new decision by Google is implemented on a larger scale and generates revenue, then it may be considered that companies are trying to exploit legal cases for profit.
From their side, law enforcement authorities consider that this practice could lead even smaller companies to adopt it, which in turn could cause police departments of small towns to limit their requests for data access and prioritize those that are most important.
As experts dealing with privacy security note, these charges are necessary to cover the cost that the company assumes for providing the data.
Google holds a lot of information on billions of users. Law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and around the world file a large number of legal requests to gain access to this information. In 2019, Google received nearly 75,000 legal requests in the first half of the year for about 165,000 accounts worldwide.
Google had previously implemented this practice for legal requests regarding the provision of user data, but after a while it stopped doing so. A spokesperson said that the company does not routinely charge a fee for legal requests, but from now on Google has decided to charge a flat fee for various legal requests.
