WaPo: Google location data was used to find Jan. 6 rioters. It’s disappearing.

WaPo: Google location data was used to find Jan. 6 rioters. It’s disappearing. by Rachel Weiner
and Drew Harwell (“Special counsel Jack Smith has a plan for how to illustrate Donald Trump’s influence over the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Prosecutors will show a map of people gathered around the Ellipse to hear Trump say, ‘we’re going to the Capitol’ to ‘fight like hell,’ then follow those supporters in real time as they head down Pennsylvania Avenue to where lawmakers were certifying President Biden’s victory. That visualization, detailed in court filings in Trump’s federal election subversion case in D.C., was created with data from Google. But the tool that has pitted law enforcement investigative priorities against personal privacy concerns soon won’t be so accessible. The company will no longer store location history that was used to identify hundreds of people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 and to prosecute the man those rioters hoped to keep in power.”)