The New Way Police Could Use Your Google Searches Against You

For millennia, we've been told that asking questions was the path to enlightenment. But in the surveillance age, it might land you in jail. That's the danger of a new search tactic that police are increasingly turning to in their constant campaign to transform our phones and devices into evidence against us: keyword warrants. One Denver court may soon rule on whether they can continue as a policing tactic--and in the post-Roe era, the wrong decision could put abortion seekers in unprecedented danger. Police have used web browser history and search engine data in their investigations for about as long as the data has existed, but keyword warrants are different--a digital dragnet to find every user who searches for a specific person, place or thing.