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PRIVACY experts are concerned the US government is overreaching by secretly issuing warrants for Google to turn over a person's search terms.

Federal investigators are pursuing so-called "keyword warrants" and getting Google to provide information based on anyone who searched a victim's name or their address during a particular year, according to a court document that was mistakenly unsealed in September.

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The revelation came in a 2019 federal case in Wisconsin where investigators pursuing men they suspected were trafficking and sexually abusing a minor who had gone missing.

The investigators approached Google to supply information on anyone who used their search engine to type in the victims name, two spellings of her mothers name and her address over 16 days that year, according to Forbes.

Authorities being able to access peoples searches is concerning to privacy experts who fear they could breach of Fourth Amendment protections from unreasonable searches.

Trawling through Googles search history database enables police to identify people merely based on what they might have been thinking about, for whatever reason, at some point in the past, surveillance and cybersecurity counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union Jennifer Granick told Forbes.

Google didnt deny the searches and claimed they were fairly supportive of both law enforcement and protected individual rights.

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As with all law enforcement requests, we have a rigorous process that is designed to protect the privacy of our users while supporting the important work of law enforcement, a Google spokesperson said.

While the Silicon Valley tech giant responds to thousands of warrant orders every year, the governments keyboard warrants are a new and potentially controversial pursuit.

The document was also unredacted, meaning the accidental unsealing published the kidnapping victims name, her Facebook profile, her phone number and address - a potential breach of a minors privacy, according to Forbes.

Aside from the Wisconsin sex abuse case, which has since been sealed, Forbes was able to find at least one other instance where a keyword warrant was sought.

That case occurred in the Northern District of California in December 2020, but unlike the Wisconsin case, the document was sealed.

That order is listed in the docket as: Application by the United States for a Search Warrant for Google Accounts Associated with Six Search Terms and Four Search Dates, according to Forbes.

Following the publication of Googles keyboard warrants article, Jennifer Lynch, surveillance litigation director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), detailed three other Google keyword warrants.

She found they involved an investigation into serial Austin bombings in 2018, which resulted in the deaths of two people.

Also, Google is not the only company serving up such information to law enforcment agencies.

Both Yahoo and Microsoft appear to have supplied the similar search data in two cases, Forbes reported.

Just last month, Google was under pressure to explain is method of providing location data to law enforcement in an attempt to catch criminals.

Authorities were able to seek a geofence warrant' that puts Google on the clock to hand over a persons data.

Google reported it fielded 11,554 geofence location warrants from law enforcement last year.

It said 8,396 had been requested in 2019.

Police in Gainesville, Florida turned to Google to Google supply intel about a man called Zachary McCoy after they determined his routine bike ride had him passing through a crime scene.

McCoy was received an alarming email from Google in January 2020 informing him that the police had requested his user data.

He had seven days to go to court if he wanted to block the release of his Google data.

He learned that the case involved a burglary that had happened at a home on his bike route that particular day in 2019.

Police had obtained McCoy's Google location data at the time through a geofence warrant.

The connection between his location and the site of the crime meant the police wanted to access more data about McCoy.

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US Government orders Google to TRACK users who search certain terms sparking fears innocent people will b... - The Sun

Michael Valdez filed a lawsuit in 2015 after he was shot twice in 2013 following a police chase.

DENVER A Denver jury awarded more than $2.4 million to a man who was shot by a Denver Police (DPD)officer in 2013, court records show.

According to the verdict form, the jury said Sgt. Robert Motyka should pay $131,000 in damages and that the city and county of Denver should pay $2.4 million. That decision was made on Sept. 23 in connection with a civil lawsuit filed by Michael Valdez in 2015.

The jury found Denver liable for a failure to train and found that Motyka used excessive force which violated Valdezs Fourth Amendment rights.

That lawsuit named Motyka, four other officers, and the city of Denver as defendants.

>The video above contains a report from the day of the shooting in 2013.

On Jan. 16, 2013, Valdez was at a store when an acquaintance named John Montoya, offered him a ride home in his red Dodge pick-up, which offer Valdez accepted, according to the lawsuit.

Valdez sat in the middle of the cab section of the truck. Two other men were located by the passenger window of the truck and in the bed of the truck; a female passenger was seated with Valdez in the middle of the cab section.

According to the lawsuit, Valdez did not know that Montoya and his vehicle were wanted by DPD for an incident earlier that morning. At some point during the ride DPD officers began chasing the truck, the lawsuit says.

At least one of the vehicle's occupants fired shots at bystanders and officers during the chase, according to prior 9NEWS reporting. Motyka was hit in the shoulder and wounded, Montoya was fatally shot by officers.

Ultimately the pick-up truck crashed into a tree near the intersection of West 39th and Osage streets in Denver, the suit says and Montoya and several passengers got out.

Valdez initially stayed inside, the lawsuit says, but eventually exited with his hands up the lawsuit says.

While on the ground with his face in the grass and his hands extended overhead, Valdez was shot by officers, the lawsuit says. He was hit once in his back and once to his fourth finger as he tried to shield his head from gunshots, the lawsuit says.

In addition, the lawsuit says, police pursued charges against Valdez which were ultimately dismissed by the District Attorney.

9NEWS has reached out to the city attorney's office but has not yet heard back, but a spokesperson told our partners at the Denver Gazette that they're reviewing the case to determine next steps.

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Jury sides with man shot by officer in 2013, awards him more than $2.4 million - 9News.com KUSA

A jury has awarded more than $2.5 million to a man who sued a Denver police sergeant and the city in 2015 when he was shot in the back and hand while he lay facedown with his hands above his head, after getting caught in the crosshairs of a shootout as an unarmed bystander when an acquaintance he had taken a ride from led police on a chase.

Michael Valdez claimed in a federal lawsuit the city failed to adequately train the officers on reasonable use of force during arrests. A jury on Sept. 23 found Denver liable for a failure to train and found that Sgt. Robert Motyka, Jr. used excessive force in violation of Valdez Fourth Amendment rights.

The verdict includes $131,000 in damages against Motyka whom Valdez sued in his individual capacity and $2.4 million against Denver.

Valdez and his attorneys couldnt immediately be reached for comment Monday.

In January 2013 Valdez accepted a ride in a friends pickup truck. Valdez didnt know the friend and his truck were wanted by Denver police for involvement in an incident earlier in the day, according to the lawsuit. A chase ensued during which shots were fired at officers, and Motyka was hit. The truck eventually crashed, and Valdez and another passenger got out of the car a few minutes later and lay on the ground, the lawsuit says.

Valdez was shot in his back and finger as he tried to shield his head from gunshots, the lawsuit claimed.

The lawsuit said Valdez suffered fractures in his back that left bone fragments in his spinal canal and had to have part of a finger on his left hand amputated. The injuries confined Valdez to a wheelchair for more than a year and he regained only partial use of his legs and feet by the time of the lawsuits filing, according to the complaint.

City attorney spokesperson Jacqulin Davis said in a statement the city is reviewing the case to determine next steps. The officer couldnt participate during the first week of the trial because of COVID restrictions, she wrote in an email.

Officer training is taken seriously in Denver, Davis wrote.

An arrest affidavit issued for Valdez at the time said Motyka received treatment at a hospital for his gunshot wound.

The lawsuit claimed prosecutors filed unsubstantiated charges for attempted murder, assault and first-degree murder against Valdez in two separate cases despite the officers knowing Valdez wasnt involved in the incidents. The lawsuit said Valdez remained in jail in agonizing pain for more than two months, unable to post bond, until prosecutors dismissed the charges on March 19, 2013.

At no time on January 16, 2013, did Mr. Valdez possess a firearm, attempt to shoot anyone, or otherwise attempt to cause bodily injury to anyone. Mr. Valdez was simply an innocent bystander who was a captive passenger in the red Dodge truck, said the lawsuit.

The complaint claimed the city has a long-standing culture of tolerating excessive force by police. It pointed to an incident a few years earlier involving Motyka when officers forcefully entered a home without a warrant and assaulted a father and three sons, later realizing the people they actually were after a pair of brothers who reportedly sold drugs and ran a brothel out of the home had recently moved out of the home, The Denver Post reported.

Members of the family were falsely charged with assaulting officers, the lawsuit brought by Valdez said.

Qusair Mohamedbhai, a civil rights attorney and partner at Rathod Mohamedbhai,represented the family in a lawsuit that resulted in a $1.8 million verdict awarded to them in 2014.

He said the jury's finding of Denver's liability in Valdez' case for failure to train stands out to him because it seems to indicate the jurors believed systemic issues within the police department are a bigger problem than the individual officer's conduct.

"When you keep these kinds of officers who have been now tagged multiple times in federal court by juries, the problem might be the officers, or it sure seems like it's the system that allows them to remain," he said.

Motyka received the Denver Police Department's Medal of Honor for his involvement in the chase, The Denver Post reported in 2015.

But the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the trial courts denial of qualified immunityfor Motyka which shields government employees from lawsuits absent a violation of clearly established constitutional rights in 2020.

In its denial of qualified immunity for Motyka, the trial court described the injured officer as very angry as well and very eager to get the occupant who shot him. The scattered bullets and Motykas attitude suggested he started shooting without making any effort to determine whether there was any immediate threat to him or others as the occupants of the cab came out.

Court cases are an important part of establishing and clarifying constitutional rights, and in that way, Mohamedbhai said qualified immunity is a tricky concept because it assumes officers are "walking repositories of case law" who approach situations by "scanning their database brains" to understand when qualified immunity will protect them and make decisions about what they should and shouldn't do.

"That's the absurdity of it," he said.

The jury took less than three hours in Valdez' lawsuit to reach its verdict when the members began deliberating on Sept. 23 after a nine-day trial, courtroom notes indicate.

Valdez originally also sued officers Peter Derrick III, Jeff Motz and Karl Roller, but dropped his claims against them in August 2018. The trial court granted qualified immunity to a fifth officer Valdez brought claims against, John MacDonald.

Colorado Politics reporter Michael Karlik contributed to this report.

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Man wins $2.5 million verdict in excessive force lawsuit against Denver police sergeant and city - Denver Gazette

In the Summer of 2020, you would have thought that criminal justice and police reform were the most important issues in America. There was even a bipartisan effort in the US Senate to try to find common legislative ground. Oh what a difference a year makes.

Today everything else is more important From Facebook to Kyrsten Sinemas wardrobe choices, from Squid Game to infrastructure. Perhaps this is a clue as to why crime control has historically trumped the rights of defendants, and why it has been so hard to legally and legislatively limit the power of law enforcement.

The dean of UC Berkeleys School of Law, Erwin Chemerinsky author of Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights joins us on this weeks WhoWhatWhy podcast to talk about the legal framework behind criminal justice and police reform, and in addition, to remind us why presidents cannot be above the law.

Chemerinsky details the long history of the courts in virtually ignoring the rights of defendants. Often counter to the Fourth Amendment and to the Constitution itself, it is very rare for the courts, either federal or state, to champion defendants rights.

Chemerinsky explains why it was only the Warren Court, in the early- to mid-60s, that ever made any real effort to protect those rights. For most of our history, things like the right to remain silent (the Miranda warning) and the right of a suspect to have a lawyer and to be protected from illegal search, were not the norm.

However, even after the Warren Court, under both Democratic and Republican presidents, he argues, courts and legislatures have still acted on behalf of criminal control and yet none of it has made us more secure.

Chemerinsky reminds us that, even with our longtime emphasis on crime control over criminal rights, we have only 5 percent of the worlds population and 25 percent of the worlds prisoners.

He chastises his own legal community for ignoring the problem for too long and says that it is only through legislation, on both the state and federal level, that some of these issues can be rectified. Relying on the courts, he says, to protect criminal rights or to hold police accountable has been a fools errand.

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What the Hell Happened to Police and Criminal Justice Reform? - WhoWhatWhy

Congress is debating a massive reconciliation bill of at least $3.5 trillion (thats trillion, with a T), and a vote is expected soon. To offset the unprecedented spending, the Biden administration and its allies in Congress need to generate offsets, and what they propose puts your privacy and that of Texas small businesses in jeopardy.

Overall, the tax hike provisions of this bill are counterproductive to a resilient economy. One provision is particularly disturbing. The administration has been planning to force your bank, credit union or other financial institution to report annually on all individual and business transactions of $600 or more.

They say they want to use this information to catch wealthy tax cheats. But this is a smokescreen, because even if the wealthiest Americans were taxed at 100%, the revenue would fail to cover this economic albatross. What they really want is to empower the IRS to surveil almost all Americans to generate more tax revenue.

How do we know this is their actual intent? Since the spring, the administration has proposed to monitor all inflows and outflows (transactions). At the $600 level, few Americans would escape the dragnet. It would annually capture information on individuals, such as your credit card payments and even transactions with family and friends.

For small business owners, it would gobble up data on partner and vendor relationships to include anyone who pays you or that you may pay over the aggregate threshold amount.

As the public has become more aware of the scheme, its backers in Congress now say they will raise the dollar amount of the reporting threshold. This is a first step of their strategy to ultimately give the Internal Revenue Service power to monitor the financial information of all Americans.

It is also a Washington negotiation ploy to get moderate politicians to accept the language despite a growing outcry from citizens across the political spectrum. Members of the Texas congressional delegation should not take the bait.

Beyond paying for profligate spending, this proposal tramples on the rights of law-abiding citizens regardless of the threshold that may be set. The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution exists to protect Americans from precisely this kind of government surveillance:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Such a voluminous IRS data grab without probable cause means that American citizens are to be presumed tax cheats by the IRS until eventually proven otherwise by bureaucrats. Keeping your tax records for seven years? Forget about it. The same IRS that has previously leaked confidential taxpayer information will have this information forever.

So where do you stand? For Republicans, do you trust President Joe Bidens IRS to use this information appropriately? Conversely for Democrats, would you trust Donald Trump or another Republican president with this power? Opposing this measure should unite Democrats, Republicans and independents.

Financial data contains some of the most personal information about our lives and livelihoods. This is why criminals try to steal it for their own financial benefit. Now our federal government which is supposed to protect our rights wants in on the action, too.

Texas banks value the privacy of our customers, and we are strongly opposed to this proposal. Community banks should not be forced to become de facto IRS reporting agents.

If we dont convince Congress to reject this provision immediately, the IRS will certainly be watching your family and business.

Chris Furlow is chief executive of the Texas Bankers Association. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

Find the full opinion section here. Got an opinion about this issue? Send a letter to the editor and you just might get published.

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Will Congress enable the IRS to spy on you? - The Dallas Morning News