Google holds intimate data about billions of people who use its products, including emails, passwords, financial information, web browsing history and physical location, and police forces around the world are asking the tech company to provide that data to aid their investigations. We are asking for it more and more. The cuts mean the company's ability to investigate and respond to search warrants and other requests has been significantly reduced, already causing delays in implementing court orders, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
“This restructuring will consolidate the team’s work across several existing locations and streamline workflow while maintaining high standards to protect user privacy and respond in a timely manner to law enforcement needs,” said Matt Bryant, a Google spokesperson. We maintain standards,” he said. “Any suggestion to the contrary is wrong.”
In addition to responding to subpoenas and search warrants for user data, the team also handles emergency calls from police when people are in crisis or when there is a threat of immediate violence, such as a school shooting. Tim said.
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The Alphabet Workers Union, a group representing some Google workers and contractors, said in a statement late last month: The cuts will only worsen the team's existing staffing shortages.
Even before the staffing cuts, the Legal Investigations Support Team was already struggling to handle the massive volume of government requests it was responsible for, according to a person familiar with the team's operations. Team members said they develop policies for how to respond to requests and review individual requests themselves to ensure they are legitimate. Sometimes Google resends the request and asks the police to narrow the scope of the request and reduce the amount of user data provided.
The dismissals come as police and intelligence agencies around the world increasingly request user data from tech companies. Google was asked to provide data on 110,945 user accounts in the U.S. from January 2023 to June 2023, according to a transparency report the company releases every six months. The company said it provided some information in 85% of those cases.
The amount of data Google provides to law enforcement has steadily increased over the past decade. In the early 2010s, the company was processing fewer requests each year. But as police have become more technologically adept and Google has amassed more data, the number of requests has increased.
In the first half of 2023, the most recent period for which Google provides data, Google received 211,201 requests for user information affecting 436,326 accounts from governments around the world. This represents an 85% increase in the number of accounts affected since the first half of 2020. In 2022, Google provided information for approximately 80% of requests, a figure that has steadily increased since the mid-2010s. Company data.
Google lawyers and other employees who respond to law enforcement requests are an important bulwark against government overreach, said Faiza Patel, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice and an expert on government surveillance.
“This is a very important feature,” Patel said. “I am concerned that we are reducing the team performing this function.”
The cuts are consistent with an overall trend across big tech companies to reduce staff working on compliance and trust and safety issues, Patel said. “We’ve seen teams that value trust and safety and compliance teams across the board being decimated by technology companies,” she said.
When Tesla owner Elon Musk acquired social media site Twitter in 2022, many of the company's Trust and Safety employees who moderate violent and offensive content on the platform were among the first people he fired. Last year, Meta laid off staff from its policy, moderation and regulatory teams as part of a mass layoff at the company.
Google and other tech companies have laid off tens of thousands of workers over the past two years as they scale back the number of workers they hired during a pandemic-era tech spending boom. The explosion of interest in artificial intelligence has led companies to reallocate their workforce and investment funds to build AI products.
After the Supreme Court's reversal, scrutiny of Google's data sharing with law enforcement increased. Roe vs. Wade In June 2022, the state passed a bill making abortion illegal. Abortion advocates have warned that police could ask Google and other tech platforms for the names of people who searched for abortion services or visited abortion clinics.
The company responded that it would automatically delete the location information of people who visited the public health center. But a review by The Washington Post several months later found that the company was still recording some location data about abortion clinic visits.
Google has said that storing location data is only optional, and that it will stop storing users' location data on its cloud servers in December 2023. This means that you cannot provide your location to the police either. If they ask for it.
“Your location information is personal. We’re committed to keeping Maps safe, private, and in your control,” Marlo McGriff, product director for Google Maps, said in a blog post at the time.
The team would also potentially have to deal with hackers posing as law enforcement officers trying to access Google user data, a person familiar with the team said. In 2022, cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs reported that hackers and fraudsters were using stolen police email accounts to try to trick Google and other tech platforms into providing user data.
Google is also subject to a 2022 agreement with the Justice Department to “reform and upgrade our legal process compliance program.” The settlement comes after Google said it had lost some user data requested by the government as part of a 2016 court case. A Justice Department spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.