This Unsettling Practice Turns Your Phone Into a Tracking Device for the Government

Reverse search warrants, in which a court forces tech firms like Google to provide information on users in a certain geographic area at a certain time, are becoming an increasingly popular tactic for law enforcement

By Albert Fox Cahn

Search warrants date back before the founding of this country and are enshrined in the Fourth Amendment, and today, some warrants work the same way that they did in 1789. Want to search a house or arrest a suspect? Have an officer swear under oath why they have probable cause. Want to search another home or arrest a second person? You’ll have to get a second warrant.

But digital searches are increasingly diverging from their brick-and-mortar predecessors. Traditional warrants allow police to get records from banks, utilities, and other companies to track a single person’s location over time, but reverse search warrants turn the process on its head, beginning with only a location. Moreover, with reverse search warrants, officers no longer need to limit their request to a single person. Officers could ask Google for the names of every device user on a specific block, whether it’s a secluded country road or Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Worse than that, it’s impossible for them to know how many people they’re targeting in advance. A reverse search warrant for a house might just give you the owner’s devices, but it may also give you data on hundreds of visitors. The judges approving these orders simply can’t know how much data they’re handing…

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