Brian Walshe’s grisly Google search history following the disappearance of his wife Ana is now the basis of a murder trial – although her body has not been found.
The data cache, including searches for “how long before you can inherit,” has been saved by the Silicon Valley giant — as it has with all users, even if they believe they’ve wiped all traces of their personal devices.
Walshe, 47, who is accused of murdering Ana in the basement of her home in Cohasset, Massachusetts, used his son’s iPad to search for “10 ways to dismember a body” and “Does baking soda make a body smell good?” search.
Not only does Google store this information, but law enforcement agencies can force tech companies to hand over the data with warrants.
This is taken a step further with controversial keyword and geofence warrants, where the process works in reverse — police can ask Google to find users who performed specific searches or were in a specific location to track suspects.
Brian Walshe this morning pleaded not guilty to beating his wife Ana to death when prosecutors presented a mountain of evidence against him, including Google searches of divorce, murder, dismemberment and decomposing bodies
Google has come under pressure from internet privacy activists, and in 2020 the tech giant’s CEO Sundar Pichai announced an automatic wipe feature to delete search and location data after 18 months.
Previously, the information was stored indefinitely.
The auto-delete feature was applied to all new Google accounts by default – but it had to be enabled by existing users.
Despite these safeguards, law enforcement can force tech giants like Google to unblock searches — and they can use keyword commands that alert authorities when certain search terms are used.
Keyword and geofence warrants are particularly controversial amid fears that the “trawl measures” will give authorities disproportionate power.
How keyword warrants work: Sweeping practices raise privacy concerns
The few keyword commands made public show how the government uses the tactic to seek unknown suspects.
First, federal investigators apply to the courts for a warrant to obtain information from Google for specific search terms, such as a victim’s name or address.
In addition to the specific terms, the request usually includes a specific date range and sometimes a specific geographic area.
If the court grants the order, investigators will then require Google or other search engines to turn over the IP addresses and account information of each user whose search meets the parameter.
The warrants are unusual in that they do not seek information about a specific suspect, but rather comprehensive information that can be used to create a list of suspects for further investigation.
Critics say it’s a “fishing expedition” by investigators that could implicate innocent people in serious crimes, but advocates of the practice say the warrants are narrowly tailored to target would-be criminals.
A related practice is known as “geofencing,” where investigators look for account information for all mobile devices in a specific area at a specific time.
Critics argue the warrants put innocent people at risk of arrest — as in the case of a Florida man involved in a 2019 burglary investigation after riding his bicycle by the scene.
The practice of keyword warrants was exposed in the arson case of Michael Williams — an associate of convicted sex offender R. Kelly — who set fire to an accuser’s car in Florida in July 2020.
Investigators sent a search warrant to Google requesting data on “users who searched the address of the apartment shortly before the arson.”
Google provided IP addresses – a unique identifier used by internet service providers – of people searching for victims’ home addresses.
The data was tied to a phone used by Williams, allowing police to pinpoint his device to a location near the scene of the arson during the crime.
Further raids of his Google searches revealed that Williams had looked up fertilizer and diesel fuel ignition, witness intimidation and tampering, and countries that do not have extradition treaties with the US.
Williams was sentenced to eight years in prison in November 2021 for attacking an SUV outside the home of one of the singer’s accusers.
Keyword orders are now the subject of a constitutional challenge — the first of its kind — after police tracked down suspects in a 2020 arson attack that killed five people in Colorado.
When police uncovered no leads, they served Google with an arrest warrant for anyone searching the address of the fire.
The tech giant complied, helping authorities track down three teenagers who raided the address. They were later charged with murder.
Defense attorneys filed a motion last Wednesday to challenge the judge’s decision to use evidence from the warrant, calling the keyword warrants “a digital trawl of immense proportions.”
They are asking the Colorado Supreme Court to review the case after the judge previously denied their request to suppress the evidence.
The keyword search warrant “is fundamentally different from traditional search warrants that look for data belonging to a suspect,” the attorneys argued in the court filing. “Instead, the process is reversed – search everyone first and identify suspects later.”
The defense argues that Google needs to crawl billions of users to respond to keyword searches.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced an auto-delete feature in 2020 to delete saved search and location data after 18 months. The feature was applied to all new Google accounts by default – but it had to be activated by existing users.
Privacy advocates say such sweeping warrants inherently get innocent people riled up.
Geofence data has ensnared a man who appeared to be at the scene of a 2018 murder in Avondale, Arizona.
Jorge Molina spent six days in jail before his lawyer presented evidence to police exonerating him.
His mother’s ex-boyfriend was later arrested in the murder. As it turned out, Molina had given the man his old phone, which was still linked to his Google account.
“Police basically treat it like DNA or fingerprint evidence, but it’s not,” said Jack Litwak, Molina’s attorney. “Jorge wasn’t around and then he was accused of the worst crime you can commit.”
Prosecutors say they are tailoring geofence warrants as narrowly as possible.
“There is a process of following the 4th Amendment that balances people’s privacy concerns and considerations, at the very least, against the interests of public safety and the government’s strong investigative interest,” said Lorrin Freeman, Wake County Attorney County, North Carolina.
Prosecutors consider Google a “witness to the robbery” in Chatrie’s case, arguing that he did not have reasonable expectations of privacy because he voluntarily opted in to Google’s location history.
Not only does Google store the information from searches, but law enforcement agencies can force tech companies to hand over the data with warrants
Privacy advocates say many cellphone users don’t understand how heavily their movements are tracked and how to opt out.
A 2018 investigation by the Associated Press found that many Google apps store data even if the owners have used a privacy setting that supposedly would prevent it.
Google later added new privacy controls that let users set an expiration date on their data, and recently said location history for new users will be automatically deleted after 18 months.
“The question of how we plan to govern this novel and extremely comprehensive capability is really up in the air,” said Jennifer Stisa Granick, Surveillance and Cybersecurity Advisor at the American Civil Liberties Union. “We as a society are just beginning to deal with such technologies.”
This practice was abolished after the US Supreme Court’s decision to dismiss Roe v. Picking up Wade under increased scrutiny.
Activists fear keyword searches and location data could be used to track women who have abortions in states where it’s legal.