A Colorado teen charged with setting a fire that killed five members of a Senegalese immigrant family in Denver has become the first person to challenge the use of Google search histories by police to find someone who might have committed a crime, according to his lawyers.
The pushback against the surveillance tool, which is also known as a reverse keyword search, is being closely watched by abortion rights and privacy advocates, who are concerned that cops could soon use it to investigate women who search for information about obtaining an abortion in states where the procedure is now deemed illegal, according to NBC News.
Lawyers for the 17-year-old argued in documents filed in Denver District Court on Thursday, June 30, that the police violated the U.S. Constitution when they got a judge to order Google to check its vast database of internet searches for users who typed in the address of a home before it was set ablaze on August 5, 2020. Three adults and two children died in the tragic fire.
Google records helped Denver investigators find suspects
According to police records, that search of Google's records helped lead investigators to the teenager and two of his friends, who were eventually charged in the deadly fire. All three were juveniles at the time of their arrests. Two of them, including the 17-year-old, are being tried as adults, and they both pleaded not guilty. The defendant in juvenile court has not yet entered a plea regarding the case, according to the Associated Press.
The teen's lawyers said that the search, and all evidence that came from it, should be thrown out by the court because it amounted to a blind expedition by police through billions of queries from Google users based on a hunch that the killer typed the home address into a search bar. According to the lawyers, that violated the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches.
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Police using keyword searches to solve cases
Michael Price, lead litigator of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers' Fourth Amendment Center and one of the 17-year-old's attorneys, said that search engines like Google are a gateway to a vast trove of information online and the way most people find what they are looking for.
Price added that every one of those queries reveals something deeply private about a person, things that they might not share with family, friends, or clergy. He said that people have a privacy interest in their internet search history, which is an archive of their personal expression.
Keyword searches have grown increasingly common in recent years, with police using them to search for suspects in various crimes, including sexual abuse in Wisconsin, a fraud case in Minnesota, and a string of Texas bombings. Keyword searches differ from traditional search warrants in that cops seek them without knowing the name of a suspect, according to The Verge. The police instead are seeking information that might lead them to a suspect.
