Have a Search Warrant for Data? Google Wants You to Pay
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for chromas:
Have a Search Warrant for Data? Google Wants You to Pay:
The tech giant has begun charging U.S. law enforcement for responses to search warrants and subpoenas.
[...] Facing an increasing number of requests for its users' information, Google began charging law enforcement and other government agencies this month for legal demands seeking data such as emails, location tracking information and search queries.
Google's fees range from $45 for a subpoena and $60 for a wiretap to $245 for a search warrant, according to a notice sent to law enforcement officials and reviewed by The New York Times. The notice also included fees for other legal requests.
A spokesman for Google said the fees were intended in part to help offset the costs of complying with warrants and subpoenas.
Federal law allows companies to charge the government reimbursement fees of this type, but Google's decision is a major change in how it deals with legal requests.
Some Silicon Valley companies have for years forgone such charges, which can be difficult to enforce at a large scale and could give the impression that a company aims to profit from legal searches. But privacy experts support such fees as a deterrent to overbroad surveillance.
Google has tremendous amounts of information on billions of users, and law enforcement agencies in the United States and around the world routinely submit legal requests seeking that data. In the first half of 2019, the company received more than 75,000 requests for data on nearly 165,000 accounts worldwide; one in three of those requests came from the United States.
[...] The new fees could help recover some of the costs required to fill such a large volume of legal requests, said Al Gidari, a lawyer who for years represented Google and other technology and telecommunications companies. The requests have also grown more complicated as tech companies have acquired more data and law enforcement has become more technologically sophisticated.
"None of the services were designed with exfiltrating data for law enforcement in mind," said Mr. Gidari, who is now the consulting privacy director at Stanford's Center for Internet and Society.
[...] In April, The Times reported that Google had been inundated with a new type of search warrant request, known as geofence searches. Drawing on an enormous Google database called Sensorvault, they provide law enforcement with the opportunity to find suspects and witnesses using location data gleaned from user devices. Those warrants often result in information on dozens or hundreds of devices, and require more extensive legal review than other requests.
[...] Google will not ask for reimbursement in some cases, including child safety investigations and life-threatening emergencies, the spokesman said.
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