A new court filing argues that Google is helping the U.S. government circumvent Fourth Amendment protections in order to conduct warrantless searches.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has formally accused Google of scanning billions of personal files of users at the request of the U.S. government. EPIC recently filed a “friend of the court” brief alleging that Google is helping the U.S. government conduct warrantless searches by scanning user files in search of potentially illegal content or evidence of crimes.
The brief came in response to United States v. Wilson, a case where Google scanned images of billions of users files in an attempt to track images of missing children reported by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). After scanning the images contained within users files, Google contacts law enforcement to share information on individuals who may have images of missing children. However, this entire process happens without permission from users or a warrant issued by a court. EPIC’s brief argues that “because neither Google nor the government explained how the image matching technique actually works or presented evidence establishing accuracy and reliability, the government’s search was unreasonable.”
EPIC says this situation is allowing law enforcement to ignore Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure of property and conduct warrantless searches with help from Google.
“If, for example, police officials would like to examine the digital files of certain suspects, they can simply turn to Google, which will do all the searching for them – and without the time, expense or hassle of getting a warrant for this search,” CPO Magazine reports. “For police departments, warrantless searches of digital material would be one way to make their criminal investigations much easier.”
The crux of this particular case revolves around a new Google algorithm that actively scans files to find a specific image using image matching. Previously, the NCMEC was supposed to provide Google with image hashes that are used to identify a unique image without showing the actual image. However, Google’s new algorithm uses image matching instead of image hashing. EPIC said the “lower court made a key mistake” by confusing file hashing with the more personal method of image matching.
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