TechScape: How police use location and search data to find suspects – and not always the right ones

In this week's newsletter: Geofence warrants' tied a man in the wrong place at the wrong time to a crime he didn't commit - is he the only one?

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In January 2020, Florida resident Zachary McCoy received a concerning email from Google: local authorities were asking the company for his personal information and he had just seven days to stop them from handing it over.

Police were investigating a burglary, McCoy later found out, and had issued Google what's called a geofence warrant. The court-ordered warrant requested the company look for and hand over information on all the devices that were within the vicinity of the broken-into home at the time of the alleged crime. McCoy was on one of his regular bike rides around the neighbourhood at the time and the data Google handed over to police placed him near the scene of the burglary.