When San Francisco Deputy Public Defender Sierra Villaran set out to explain to a judge just how sweeping a single police warrant could be, she cited a striking estimate: to comply with the warrant, Google likely had to search the location data of some 500 million people — all to identify six possible suspects.
“If you have location history enabled on your phone, they searched you,” Villaran said. “They searched me.”
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That kind of data dragnet is subject to the Fourth Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday, in a decision civil liberties advocates are calling a significant, if incomplete, victory in the fight over digital surveillance.
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