Google to hide user location even from itself, preventing it from giving data to law enforcement
- An update to Google Maps will keep location data on a user’s device and backups will be encrypted
- The change will prevent Google from being able to respond to law enforcement warrants requesting data on everyone in the vicinity of a crime
Google is changing its Location History feature on Google Maps, according to a blog post this week. The feature, which Google says is off by default, helps users remember where they’ve been. The company said Thursday that for users who have it enabled, location data will soon be saved directly on users’ devices, blocking Google from being able to see it, and, by extension, blocking law enforcement from being able to demand that information from Google.
“Your location information is personal,” said Marlo McGriff, director of product for Google Maps, in the blog post. “We’re committed to keeping it safe, private and in your control.”
The change comes three months after a Bloomberg Businessweek investigation that found police across the US were increasingly using warrants to obtain location and search data from Google, even for nonviolent cases, and even for people who had nothing to do with the crime.
“It’s well past time,” said Jennifer Lynch, the general counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based non-profit that defends digital civil liberties. “We’ve been calling on Google to make these changes for years, and I think it’s fantastic for Google users, because it means that they can take advantage of features like location history without having to fear that the police will get access to all of that data.”
Google said it would roll out the changes gradually through the next year on its own Android and Apple’s iOS mobile operating systems, and that users will receive a notification when the update comes to their account. The company won’t be able to respond to new geofence warrants once the update is complete, including for people who choose to save encrypted backups of their location data to the cloud.
“It’s a good win for privacy rights and sets an example,” said Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the security and surveillance project at the Center for Democracy & Technology. The move validates what litigators defending the privacy of location data have long argued in court: that just because a company might hold data as part of its business operations, that doesn’t mean users have agreed the company has a right to share it with a third party.
