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3 Teens Almost Got Away With Murder. Then Police Found Their Google Searches
An arson attack in Colorado had detectives stumped. The way they solved the case could put everyone at risk.
But such programs rely on an unreliable combination of signals from GPS satellites, cell towers, Wi-Fi networks, and other connected devices nearby, and their accuracy can vary from a few feet to hundreds of miles. So, unaware of these precedents, Hansen and Sandoval drafted their warrant from scratch, requesting names, birth dates, and physical addresses for all users who’d searched variations of 5312 Truckee Street in the 15 days before the fire. No systemic data is being collected on how often reverse keyword warrants are being used, but Andrew Crocker, surveillance litigation director of digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation says it’s possible that there have been hundreds of examples to date.
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