Geofencing requests - despite violating privacy rights - are being issued more frequently in the US every year. [...] The most recent example is Zachary McCoy, who was the prime suspect in a case of burglary due to a bike ride. Data from his fitness app showed that he had passed a burglarized home in his neighborhood three times during the timeframe of the burglary. As police had no clue who might have been the burglar, they sent a geofencing warrant to Google. [...] Being scared, his parents dipped into their savings to pay thousands of dollars to a lawyer to make sure their son would not go to prison for a crime that he never committed. The case against Zachary was eventually closed, but it shows that even when being innocent, you can still be in the wrong place at the wrong time - and in some cases you can even get jailed for being at the wrong place as another example from Arizona shows. # Being jailed because of Google data In 2018 an innocent man was jailed for six days in Avondale, Arizona, because his Google data showed that he had been at the scene of a shooting where one person was murdered. To make things worse his car had been spotted on surveillance cameras in the area as well. Later it turned out that the suspect's stepfather had used his car and had a device with him, on which the suspect's Google credentials where logged in. By now, the innocent suspect has filed a lawsuit against the authorities because while prosecutors never pursued charges against him, he lost his job, his car and his reputation due to the investigation, during which the police also released his full name in a press release. He was also unable to find a new job because a quick Google search showed that he had been investigated for murder so he did not pass background checks. # Tracking and geofencing The two cases show one thing very clearly: Al data that is accessible, is being used - whether you like it or not, even whether Google likes it or not. Google has to comply with warrants as any other company in the world. The problem is that today much more data about us exists than we can even imagine. The authorities are quickly learning how to get hold of this data, and despite the fact that general geofencing warrants are violating privacy rights, these are widely issued by judges in the US. # Fishing expeditions by the police Google said in a court filing last year that the requests from state and federal law enforcement authorities were increasing rapidly: by more than 1,500 percent from 2017 to 2018, and by 500 percent from 2018 to 2019. "This fishing expedition infringes on the privacy rights of so many possible people who had the misfortune of being in an area where a crime is alleged to be committed," said Jerome Greco, staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society to Forbes. "We should not allow for such broad access to the data of so many on the mere speculation that a suspect may have used a cellphone near the location of the crime." Police officers described the data they obtained from Google as "incredible". People would not realize to what extent they are being tracked - not by the government, but by private companies such as Google. Continua su https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/google-tracking-suspect/ Giacomo