Thanks to Google, cops are accessing the data of innocent people.

The New York Times reports the existence of Sensorvault, Google’s treasure trove of location data. Law enforcement agencies around the country have been accessing this data to identify people in the vicinity of a crime.

You don’t even have to be involved in a crime or on a warrant to be caught up in a sweep. With “geofence” warrants, cops can ask for information on an area and time period—and Google hands over the information of all the devices that were there. Imagine a crime happening in a busy area, or near a protest, where enormous numbers of innocent people could be targeted. And there’s no transparency or accountability about what law enforcement agencies do with that data once it’s handed over.

This is a gross violation of our right to privacy. Google’s sketchy location gathering practices were exposed last year and now we find out that the information is being handed over to cops. Google’s tools are being used in the name of authoritarianism—but we don’t have to stand for it.

Tell Google: “Stop storing our data in Sensorvault. Your data practices put innocent people at risk.“