After a man was shot to death outside a Paramount bank in 2019, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department detectives turned to Google for help identifying suspects.

Through a search warrant, detectives directed the tech giant to provide cell phone location data to people who were near places the man visited on the day he was killed. The data Google provided eventually led detectives

find

two suspects who are now in prison for the murder.

But law enforcement’s demand for Google location data using so-called geofence orders also raised concerns that the requests violated the defendants’ constitutional rights. This year, a California court upheld the murder, but ruled the conviction violated the warrant

Fourth 4th

Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures because it was too broad and could have potentially swamped thousands of people.

The case, People vs. Meza, highlights central tension over exploding use of geofence warrants: Law enforcement considers Google location data essential to solving crimes, but civil rights groups fear

geofence search

arrest warrants will invade the privacy of innocent bystanders. The number of geofence orders Google reports receive from US law enforcement has increased from 982 in 2018 to 11,554 in 2020, the latest released data shows.

Concerns about the controversial law enforcement tool grew after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to abortion last year. As states banned or restricted abortions, civil rights groups feared

that law enforcement

could use Google data to find out if a woman planned to illegally terminate her pregnancy. While abortion remains legal in California, proponents feared that officials in states that ban abortion could use geofence orders to track down people coming here for the procedure.

These privacy concerns caught the attention of Assemblywoman Mia Bonta (D-Alameda), who introduced legislation to ban orders that force tech companies to disclose the identities of people who may have been to a certain place at a certain time or who looked up keywords online. The original version of the bill would have banned all geofence orders, but it was introduced as part of a package of bills that aims to strengthen California as a haven for abortion seekers.

Frankly, it’s a terrifying moment for us in terms of the amount of information that can be made accessible to a third party, Bonta said in an interview.

The legislation, AB 793, received support from privacy advocates, reproductive rights groups, Google and the industry organization TechNet. But strong resistance from law enforcement made the effort this year as lawmakers scrambled to figure out how to draft a law that would protect people seeking abortion while allowing police to use geofence orders to investigate crimes.

It became pretty clear that there could be unintended consequences based on the way that language was drafted, said Bonta, who vowed to focus the bill on gender-affirming care and access to abortion and try to pass it next year. We wanted to make sure this was absolutely right.

The bill faces a high bar to pass because it could change a law passed by voters in 1982 that would require support from two-thirds of the state

L

legislature.

Opponents said the bill was too broad and would hinder law enforcement officers’ ability to investigate crimes.

Michelle Contois, a Ventura County district attorney who speaks on behalf of the California District Attorneys Assn., said law enforcement

civil servants

aren’t opposed to protecting patients who come to the state for abortions or gender-affirming care. But banning all geofence orders, she said, is really overkill.

There are crimes that I think may not be solved at all, she said. When we use it, it’s because we think it’s the best way to get what we need in this case.

Privacy advocates and abortion activists question whether the data requests are really necessary, as geofence warrants may contain information about people who are not potential suspects. The Electronic Frontier Foundation called on Google in 2021 to oppose compliance with these controversial orders. Google says it collects a user’s location history data for advertising and to improve the company’s services.

The debate in Sacramento forged an unusual alliance between tech giants and privacy advocates. In May, Google sent lawmakers a letter saying it supported AB 793. The company added that it would work with law enforcement agencies to limit orders if

that is it

asked for too much data.

Most law enforcement demands focus on one

or

more specific accounts. Geofence, on the other hand, guarantees information about users who may have been in a certain place at a certain time. As such, these arrest warrants raise heightened concerns about whether they are illegally bringing in innocent users, Rebecca Prozan, Google’s director of the West Coast Region for Government Affairs and Public Policy, said.

wrote

in the letter.

Last year, a coalition of tech giants, including Google, also backed a bill in New York that would ban the search of geolocation and keyword data, though it failed to pass the legislature.

Data reported to the California Department of Justice shows

S

geofence orders have been used in several criminal investigations this year,

included

a felony hit-and-run in San Diego and a murder in Riverside. California authorities

have so

used geofence warrants to investigate a Mexican mob murder and other crimes. The FBI turned to Google data to find out who was in the U.S. Capitol during the January 6, 2021 riot. riot

.

Geofence warrants were also used to identify people protesting the police killings of George Floyd in Minnesota and Jacob Blake in Wisconsin. Sometimes people got carried away by it

coincidentally being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In one case, an innocent man in Florida became a burglary suspect after riding his bicycle past a burgled home in 2019.

District attorneys say California laws are sufficient

enough

to protect people’s digital privacy. A geofence warrant typically consists of three steps. in the first

step,

Google provides law enforcement with anonymized information based on the geographic area and time frame specified in the warrant. Using the larger data set, law enforcement is narrowing down the devices authorities want to examine before requesting Google to provide it

them

Identification information such as phone numbers, emails and names, according to the billing analysis.

It’s not just that we ask Google and Google gives us all the information, said Contois of the district attorney. Not until we’ve gone through several steps, convincing the judge of probable cause at each step, may we be able to get identifying information and names.

California Police Chiefs Assn. did not respond to a request for comment. It was one of several law enforcement agencies opposed to the bill, including the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Hayley Tsukayama, senior legislative activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who pushed for the bill, said AB 793 proposed banning all geofence orders because there were concerns that more targeted legislation would have loopholes that could still lead law enforcement to identify abortion seekers. Limiting the bill, she said, is difficult for some of those reasons.

I’m not saying we can’t, she said. We just needed more time than there was left in this session.