techpolicy: Reverse Keyword Search Warrants and the Threat to Online Privacy

techpolicy: Reverse Keyword Search Warrants and the Threat to Online Privacy by Abigail Zislis (“Online privacy rights, already limited in the United States, face new threats from the advent of reverse keyword search warrants. In recent years, local and federal law enforcement have become increasingly reliant upon reverse keyword search warrants as an investigative digital dragnet tool to compel Google and other major search engine companies to furnish the personal information of users who have conducted a search query related to a crime. Known for their overbreadth and lack of precision, keyword warrants pull data on all users who have searched a set of keywords, including terms or phrases, during a set timeframe and, possibly, within a defined geographic area, and then work backward to investigate and identify potential leads or criminal suspects. Because these invasive dragnet requests are more than constitutionally suspect and can have serious implications for the civil rights and liberties of US internet users, they ought to be strictly regulated at the federal level.”)