Reverse Keyword Search Warrants and the Threat to Online Privacy

Abigail Zislis writes:

Reverse keyword warrants impose severe consequences on individual constitutional rights, which may range from breaching Fourth Amendment protections from unreasonable searches, to implicating innocent and unrelated users who search for similar relevant terms, to chilling First Amendment freedom of speech rights, and curtailing online access to critical healthcare information.

I. Keyword warrants threaten Fourth Amendment rights to be free from unreasonable government searches & risk implicating innocent users.

Reverse keyword warrants are especially threatening to the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable government searches because they can place hundreds or thousands of unsuspecting and innocent people in the crosshairs of law enforcement. By their nature, dragnet warrants request the disclosure of multiple users’ private information, where a search coincides with a certain set of keywords inputted into a search engine. This practice, which is based on a “mere hunch” that some unknown and unnamed individual may have queried a specific phrase related to a crime, runs directly counter to Fourth Amendment constitutional search requirements grounded in probable cause and particularity.