Joshua Coon
Christian. Student. Photographer.
3/17/2017 2 Comments Finding a FraudsterA judge in the quiet state of Minnesota, has recently made waves in the California tech community after requesting a large sum of data from Google in an effort to find information in a fraud investigation. The judge issued a warrant subpoenaing Google for the names, email addresses, social security numbers, payment information, account data, and IP addresses of the entire town of Edina from December 1, 2016 to January 7, 2017. The fraud case that is causing this stur is over $28,500 that was thought to be requested from a Spire Credit Union customer, but happened to be from the identity thief that is still at large. Investigators did a Google search of the victim's name which resulted in the discovery of a fake passport using the victim’s name. In order to find the perpetrator, Edina police resorted to requesting Google to divulge the search information of thousands of people from the city in order to uncover who might have been searching the victim’s name prior to the fraud. Google has since denied the outlandish subpoena from the Hennepin County judge and has responded in saying, “we will always push back when we receive excessively broad requests for data about our users.” This case brings into question the ethics of such broad data collection and Google’s decision to fight the court order. If Google obliged to the warrant, they would be handing over the sensitive information of roughly 50,000 of its users. By rejecting the order, Google could be obstructing justice (depending on who you ask). Since this is not a life-or-death matter (or a crime of much proportion in the grand scheme of things), I side with Google’s decision to withhold information from investigators. In the greater interest of the company, its millions of users, and the precedent that would be set if this warrant is upheld, I side with Google’s choice to withhold the information and condemn the Hennepin County judge for his or her blatant violation of the United States’ 4th amendment to the Constitution. With or without a law degree, it’s hard to misinterpret, “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” As this development between Hennepin County and Google continues to unfold, I am curious to see its result. In the end, I hope that the fraudster is caught and that the sensitive information of thousands of Edina residents is kept secure from overreach of any amount.
2 Comments
Adrienne Horca
3/31/2017 09:52:42 pm
Joshua,
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Luigi
5/17/2017 06:37:23 pm
I think that new standards for data collection and distribution are just around the corner, and while the US Constitution had a framework in mind it had no idea what the world of today would look like.
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