Colorado court upholds Google keyword search warrant which led to arrests in fatal arson
The HinduColorado’s highest court on Monday upheld the search of Google users' keyword history to identify suspects in a 2020 fatal arson fire, an approach that critics have called a digital dragnet that threatens to undermine people's privacy and their constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. At issue before the court was a search warrant from Denver police requiring Google to provide the IP addresses of anyone who had searched over 15 days for the address of the home that was set on fire, killing five immigrants from the West African nation of Senegal. But in this case, the trail had run cold and police were seeking a “reverse keyword” warrant for the Google search history in a quest to identify possible suspects. The state Supreme Court ruled that Seymour had a constitutionally protected privacy interest in his Google search history even though it was just connected with an IP address and not his name.
History of this topic
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