The US authorities forced Google to provide users' search queries for certain keywords.
This is reported by The New York Post .
According to the publication, the US government ordered the company to provide information, including account names, IP addresses and CookieID, about everyone who entered certain search queries. This was done to facilitate the work of law enforcement agencies.
The police and investigative agencies used the so-called "keyword warrant" for their purposes. Law enforcement officers sent requests to Google to find information about alleged criminals involved in human trafficking and violence against minors.
Only two such warrants have been made public in recent years. However, experts say that this practice raises concerns, since innocent users may be involved in a criminal investigation.
"This unprecedented method threatens the interests of the First Amendment (the US Constitution protecting freedom of speech, press and assembly - ed.) and inevitably captures innocent people, especially if the keywords are not unique and the time frame is not accurate. To make matters worse, the police are currently doing this secretly, which isolates this practice from public debate and regulation," she concluded. Jennifer Granick, Surveillance and cybersecurity advisor at the American Civil Liberties Union.
In 2017, a Philadelphia court ordered Google, in the presence of a court order, to transfer to the American authorities the correspondence of users of the Gmail mail service stored on servers outside the United States. The company decided not to speak out on the results of the trials.
