Google refused an order to release huge amounts of data. Will other companies bow under pressure?

In 2018, a federal judge signed a search warrant for a windfall of private information to help find the robber responsible for a string of crimes in southern Maine. Authorities were seeking a large amount of sensitive user data — including names, addresses and locations — of anyone who had been in the vicinity of at least two of the nine robbery locations, within 30 minutes of the crime. Google never responded to the warrant.  It is unclear whether Google, which could not be reached for immediate comment, failed to respond to the warrant in an attempt to thwart law enforcement and protect user privacy or because it couldn’t locate the information. But the incident appears to be an example of corporations struggling with how to position themselves in relation to law enforcement. In an age where virtually everyone carries a phone at nearly every moment of the day, devices have a trove of data for law enforcement to look to — map applications, WiFi hotspots, cell-tower triangulations, images with embedded locations.

People should not have to rely on tech companies to make discretionary decisions about whether to protect such personal data, said Nathan Freed Wessler, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. Instead, he said, sensitive information should be protected by strong laws and judges’ strong enforcement of the Constitution.