Colorado Supreme Court upholds Google keyword search warrant that led to arrests in fatal arson
Colorado’s highest court on Monday upheld the search of Google users’ keyword history to identify suspects in a 2020 fatal arson fire, an approach that critics have called a digital dragnet that threatens to undermine people’s privacy and their constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
However, the Colorado Supreme Court cautioned it was not making a “broad proclamation” on the constitutionality of such warrants and emphasized it was ruling on the facts of just this one case.
At issue before the court was a search warrant from Denver police requiring Google to provide the IP addresses of anyone who had searched over 15 days for the address of the home that was set on fire, killing five immigrants from the West African nation of Senegal.
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After some back and forth over how Google would be able to provide information without violating its privacy policy, Google produced a spreadsheet of 61 searches made by eight accounts. Google provided the IP addresses for those accounts, but no names. Five of the IP addresses were based in Colorado and police obtained the names of those people through another search warrant. After investigating those people, police eventually identified three teens as suspects.