Police Are Finding Suspects Based on Their Online Searches as Courts Weigh Privacy Concerns
Police departments across the country are increasingly turning to so called reverse keyword warrants, asking Google to reveal who searched for specific terms tied to crimes. The tactic is helping solve serious cases, but it is also prompting courts and civil liberties advocates to question how far law enforcement should be allowed to go into people’s search histories.
Unlike traditional warrants that focus on a known suspect or location, reverse keyword warrants work backward. Investigators ask for IP addresses connected to searches of particular words or phrases within a certain time frame, such as a victim’s home address or terms like “pipe bomb.”
Authorities have used the method in cases including a series of bombings in Austin, Texas, the assassination of Brazilian politician Marielle Franco, and a deadly arson in Colorado.
A Pennsylvania Case That Reached the State’s Highest Court
The debate intensified after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld the use of a reverse keyword warrant in a 2016 rape investigation.
State police had few leads after a woman was attacked outside Milton, Pennsylvania. Investigators obtained a warrant directing Google to disclose accounts that searched for the victim’s name or address during the week of the assault.
More than a year later, Google identified two searches for the woman’s address made hours before the attack from a specific IP address. That information led police to John Edward Kurtz, a state prison guard.
After surveillance and DNA testing connected him to the crime, Kurtz confessed to the rape and to attacks on four other women. He was convicted in 2020 and sentenced to 59 to 280 years in prison.
Kurtz’s attorneys argued police lacked probable cause and violated his privacy rights. The state Supreme Court rejected those claims but split in its reasoning. Three justices concluded Kurtz had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his Google searches. Three others said police had sufficient probable cause to seek anyone who searched the victim’s address before the assault.
A dissenting justice argued that probable cause requires more than what he described as a guess that a perpetrator would have used Google.
Good Faith or Constitutional Overreach
A similar issue reached the Colorado Supreme Court in 2023 after investigators sought IP addresses of anyone who searched a home’s address in connection with a fatal arson. The court ruled the warrant was constitutionally flawed but allowed the evidence, finding police had acted in good faith under existing law.
Civil liberties groups argue the practice turns millions of innocent users into potential suspects. In an appeal brief in the Pennsylvania case, the American Civil Liberties Union warned that such warrants give police broad access to “the thoughts, feelings, concerns and secrets of countless people.”
