Yesterday, the Supreme Court of Colorado handed down the first state supreme court case on the law of reverse keyword searches for Google terms: People v. Seymour. Here's the issue: If the government has reason to think that someone entered in a particular Google search related to a crime, can it get a warrant to compel Google to hand over IP addresses or account that entered that search? If so, how broad can the search be? And is a warrant needed at all?
Seymour involves an arson at a particular address. Having no leads about who set the arson, investigators figured that whoever did the crime probably googled the address of the arson in the weeks beforehand. (The idea being, I assume, that between getting directions and getting Google images pictures of what it and the surrounding area looks like, it's a natural way to do recon of the place as part of the plan to commit the arson.). Investigators obtained a warrant covering the 15 days leading up to the arson, and Google responded that 8 IP addresses had googled that address. Five of the eight addresses were local, and investigators ruled out two of them. They then obtained another warrant to get records of the other three. One of the three was the defendant, Seymour.
Among the questions raised: Did Seymour have Fourth Amendment rights in Google's records of his search terms? Someone at his computer, presumably him, had googled the address; Google had the search term that was sent to it. Did informing the government that the term had been searched from his IP address violate his Fourth Amendment rights?
