Reverse Location and Reverse Keyword Search Prohibition Act
SIGN-ON LETTER FOR THE REVERSE LOCATION AND REVERSE KEYWORD SEARCH PROHIBITION ACT
A.3306 Assemblymember Solages/S.217 Senator Myrie
February 2023
We, the undersigned organizations, support The Reverse Location And Reverse Keyword Search Prohibition Act (A.3306 Solages/S.217 Myrie) and urge the legislature to pass, and the Governor to sign, this bill.
New York’s police and prosecutors are using alarming new legal tactics to gain unprecedented access to New Yorkers’ location history. “Geofence warrants” allow police to compel Google and other tech companies to identify every person in a specified place during a specified period. This geographic area could be as small as an apartment or as large as a city, allowing police to track nearly limitless numbers of people with a single court order. Unlike normal search warrants, which require proof that an individual is suspected of a particular crime, these search warrants are issued when the police don’t even know how many people’s information will be provided, let alone have probable cause that they each have a connection to a crime.
A.3306 and S.217 would ban both geofence warrants and keyword warrants, a related practice that allows police to compel Google and other search engines to reveal everyone who searched for a specific name, event, or address. Both of these general warrants violate the Constitution and could easily be weaponized to track political protests, religious services, and other sensitive sites.
A 2019 example: the Manhattan District Attorney’s office obtained a reverse location warrant for the site of a fight involving the pro-Trump group the “Proud Boys” to attempt to identify the counter-protesters at the event.
A.3306 and S.217 would also ban police purchases of similar data from tech companies and data brokers. Increasingly, police are able to buy the information that they can’t force companies to hand over in court. Even if a company like Google were to refuse such a request, countless other data brokers would readily sell our information to any bidder, including the police. We can’t put a price on the Fourth Amendment, but police departments routinely do, and it’s shockingly low.
Geofence warrants and keyword warrants pose a clear threat to New Yorkers, putting them at risk of false arrest, chilling First Amendment rights to protest and worship, and giving police an Orwellian power to track the public. By passing this bill, New York will demonstrate its commitment to New Yorkers’ safety from false arrest, civil rights, and the privacy rights enshrined in our Constitution. For these reasons, we urge the legislature to pass and the Governor to sign the Reverse Location And Reverse Keyword Search Prohibition Act (A.3306 Solages/S.217Myrie).