Judge Grants Search Warrant For Everyone Who Searched a Crime Victim's Name On Google (startribune.com)

Hennepin County District Judge Gary Larson has issued a search warrant to Edina, Minnesota police to collect information on people who searched for variations of a crime victim's name on Google from Dec. 1 through Jan. 7. Google would be required to provide Edina police with basic contact information for people targeted by the warrant, as well as Social Security numbers, account and payment information, and IP and MAC addresses. StarTribune reports: Information on the warrant first emerged through a blog post by public records researcher Tony Webster. Edina police declined to comment Thursday on the warrant, saying it is part of an ongoing investigation. Detective David Lindman outlined the case in his application for the search warrant: In early January, two account holders with SPIRE Credit Union reported to police that $28,500 had been stolen from a line of credit associated with one of their accounts, according to court documents. Edina investigators learned that the suspect or suspects provided the credit union with the account holder's name, date of birth and Social Security number. In addition, the suspect faxed a forged U.S. passport with a photo of someone who looked like the account holder but wasn't. Investigators ran an image search of the account holder's name on Google and found the photo used on the forged passport. Other search engines did not turn up the photo. According to the warrant application, Lindman said he had reason to believe the suspect used Google to find a picture of the person they believed to be the account holder. Larson signed off on the search warrant on Feb. 1. According to court documents, Lindman served it about 20 minutes later.

Comments

Proud of myself

[Dunbal]

30+ years of being online and not one picture of me anywhere, either under my pseudonym Dunbal (which I've used since 1986), or my real name.

Re:First and second reactions

[dex22]

The warrant is specifically for Google, specifically about people who searched within a specific timeframe for the specific details used in a specific crime that happened later. They have shown their work to show that Google was the only likely source for that info used in the crime. There are not likely to be any matching results that are not related to the crime, and those that are can be easily eliminated.

Just how specific do you want them to be?

Re:WTF

[WolfgangVL]

How does Google have our SS numbers if all we do is search? Is that legal?

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Google might have *some* of that data - possibly even the MAC, if it's an Android device - but even with Google's reach, expecting them to be able to produce that data on a whole bunch of essentially random Google users just based on their searches seems a bit of a stretch. Am I missing something here, or is it just those involved in writing and granting the warrant badly need to run a few Google searches of their own?

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In general, they wouldn't know SSNs. Maybe if someone was logged in while doing the search and earlier associated a SSN with their Google account for some reason. Google probably doesn't have people's MAC addresses either. It seems the police is asking for anything that would help them identify a person no matter how unlikely that Google can actually provide it.

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Google has become the most powerful information broker on the planet. Gmail has over a billion users a month. Google scans the contents of each and every email sent and received. -- Are you sure nobody has ever discussed your SSN on that platform?

People lives their lives plugging info into google controlled mobile platforms, which google also scans, including a pretty good voice to text algorithm. --- Are you sure nobody has ever spoken, or otherwise worked with your SSN on that platform?

Google provides land-line calling and texting for free via their comms platform, google hangouts, which was re-branded from google+. Google had claimed 540 million monthly users of google+ in 2013. ---- Are you sure nobody has ever handled your personal business on that platform?

The google search platform has become so popular that it has entered the English language as a synonym for searching data. Google claims 40000 search queries a SECOND. Each search is scanned, cataloged and cross referenced with the rest of the profile that this giant has been actively building on each and every user. ----Are you sure nobody has googled your name and/or social?

YOU are careful and aware. Good for you, so am I. This does NOT mean we don't have a profile on googles servers somewhere connected to our names, location history (down to the minute is some cases-and spanning years), ISP history, B-day, MAC, SSN, favorite color, political affiliation, family ties, and sexual preference. This info is all worth something to somebody, and google's business is knowing both the data in question, as well as who is willing to pay for it.

It's folly to assume this is not the case... This is where Google makes its money. Once the cat is out of the bag regarding how easily google can and will respond to law enforcement...... well... nothing will likely happen.

The amount of this collected data that is shared with government entities around the world is STAGGERING, and that's only the stuff they want us to know about.