A must-read from The New York Times:
When detectives in a Phoenix suburb arrested a warehouse worker in a murder investigation last December, they credited a new technique with breaking open the case after other leads went cold.
The police told the suspect, Jorge Molina, they had data tracking his phone to the site where a man was shot nine months earlier. They had made the discovery after obtaining a search warrant that required Google to provide information on all devices it recorded near the killing, potentially capturing the whereabouts of anyone in the area.
Because of Google’s ubiquitous, privacy-destroying data collection practices, it has become one stop shopping for law enforcement, just as foretold by Google’s critics.
The warrants, which draw on an enormous Google database employees call Sensorvault, turn the business of tracking cellphone users’ locations into a digital dragnet for law enforcement. In an era of ubiquitous data gathering by tech companies, it is just the latest example of how personal information — where you go, who your friends are, what you read, eat and watch, and when you do it — is being used for purposes many people never expected. As privacy concerns have mounted among consumers, policymakers and regulators, tech companies have come under intensifying scrutiny over their data collection practices.
Some people — some of us — foresaw that this would be a problem.
This site is now ten years old and has been calling attention to the awfulness of Google’s business practices for a decade. And it will continue to.
Props to The New York Times for publishing this story. It’s much needed.