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Google Maps users' location history will soon be stored locally on their smartphones rather than in the cloud, a significant move that will make it more difficult for law authorities to obtain the data.
Controversial "geofence warrants" enable law enforcement to collect data from tech companies on mobile phones that passed through a certain area over a specific time period. For example, the FBI used the request to gather information about a Black Lives Matters rally in Seattle as part of an investigation into attempted arson.
With privacy concerns and the possibility of geofence warrants making anyone at the site of an alleged crime a suspect, Google has been under pressure for years to change the way it keeps users' location history. The software giant appears to be finally doing something about it with this Maps update, which is planned to roll out over the next year.
"Google made the move to explicitly bring an end to such dragnet location searches," Forbes claims, citing a Google employee "who was not authorized to speak publicly."
"We're always working on ways to give people more control over their data," Marlo McGriff, director of product at Google Maps, told The Verge in an emailed statement. This week, Google disclosed the adjustments in a blog post.
The change affects Maps' Timeline function, which recalls prior places visited by users. Location history is disabled by default, but for users who choose to enable it, Google normally stores such information in the cloud. That is what enabled law enforcement to obtain data using geofence warrants. Because location histories are now maintained on users' devices, Google will no longer have aggregate data to send over to authorities or the FBI.
According to Google, users will be notified when the update applies to their account. The update will be phased in over the next year on both the Android and iOS versions of the Google Maps app. The corporation is also modifying its default auto-delete settings, which were previously set to 18 months. Auto-delete will be set to three months by default with this upgrade. Anyone who wishes to save their location data when they acquire a new phone can do so by backing it up to the cloud, which Google will automatically encrypt.
While any internet business may be required to comply with a geofence request, Forbes says that the majority of these warrants are directed at Google. Democrats wrote to Google CEO Sundar Pichai last year, urging the corporation to "stop unnecessarily collecting and retaining customer location data," citing 11,554 geofence orders issued in 2020. They were concerned at the time that the warrants could be used to target persons attending abortion clinics during a legal crackdown on the procedure.
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