Turns out the United States government has been secretly ordering Google to hand over user data based on specific terms that users search.
The U.S. government is secretly ordering Google to provide data on anyone typing in certain search terms, an accidentally unsealed court document shows. There are fears such “keyword warrants” threaten to implicate innocent Web users in serious crimes and are more common than previously thought.
In 2019, federal investigators in Wisconsin were hunting men they believed had participated in the trafficking and sexual abuse of a minor. She had gone missing that year but had emerged claiming to have been kidnapped and sexually assaulted, according to a search warrant reviewed by Forbes. In an attempt to chase down the perpetrators, investigators turned to Google, asking the tech giant to provide information on anyone who had searched for the victim’s name, two spellings of her mother’s name and her address over 16 days across the year. After being asked to provide all relevant Google accounts and IP addresses of those who made the searches, Google responded with data in mid-2020, though the court documents do not reveal how many users had their data sent to the government.
I am not the least bit surprised by any of this. The government was already collecting mass volumes of data from the big tech companies for years. They did this under the guise of “national security” when in reality it was part of an agenda to create a massive surveillance and spy grid.
We are now at the point where these big tech companies and the government are essentially just operating as one singular system. That’s why things like this are happening.
The good news is that this insane control grid is becoming increasingly difficult for the morons in charge to manage. Each and every story that leaks out like this is further undermining the credibility of the systems they use to exert control.
