| Hi all, it's Eric. Courts have ruled that if people knowingly hand over information to a third party—a bank, for example—then those people weaken the grounds to object to the government accessing it, too. After all, they didn't care enough to keep it a secret. But what happens when the entire population effectively gives technology companies constant updates on certain vital personal information just by using their services. Is everyone agreeing to let the government scoop it all up whenever it wants? Two federal judges recently said no. The data in question is information about the physical locations of people who use Android phones or other services from Alphabet Inc.'s Google. The federal government wanted the company to hand over information about everyone who came near a particular pharmacy around the time of a crime, as it searched for both witnesses and suspects. It claimed the data it sought was anonymized, though a list of device identification numbers could surely be connected to the people who own them. Such requests, known as geofence warrants, are fairly novel. It's not hard to understand why law enforcement agencies are eager to expand their use. Nor is it hard to understand how the government could abuse such power. What if the government wanted some additional information about, say, political protestors? In a recently unsealed decision, a federal court in Illinois wrote that Google's users shouldn't be considered to be voluntarily handing over their location data just because they used phones. "The Court finds it difficult to imagine that users of electronic devices would affirmatively realize, at the time they begin using the device, that they are providing their location information to Google in a way that will result in the government's ability to obtain—easily, quickly and cheaply—their precise geographical location at virtually any point in the history of their use of the device," the court wrote. The reality is, even if they wanted do, smartphone users would have a hard time depriving tech companies of this data. People can turn off location services when it is extraneous, but apps like Google Maps require it, and the services most people use every day are a gauntlet of requests for such data that are hard for even sophisticated users to navigate. In the long term there are significant risks to a society that defaults to putting such powerful data in the hands of private technology companies. There are technical alternatives. Machine learning algorithms benefit from access to huge data pools. But they can retain what they've learned without keeping that data on hand forever. Of course, tech platforms stand to profit by doing so, and can also use their data hoards as an advantage against upstart competitors. Until there are better laws governing this data retention, tech companies are going to continue to err on the side of keeping a record of where you've been. At times, Silicon Valley has taken steps to block government access to data through technological measures. Most notably, Apple Inc. has encrypted phone data in a way that prevents it from fulfilling requests from law enforcement to break into the phones of users who are suspected of crimes. But Silicon Valley giants have been hesitant to tell their technologists to go all out to design systems that prevent government fishing expeditions, because they might have to give up some of the data themselves. For that, they're still relying on lawyers.—Eric Newcomer | 
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