Forbes reports that Google was ordered by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Kentucky to reveal to the authorities who watched certain YouTube clips during a certain period of time.
Spicy privacy case exposed in Kentucky
The police are looking for a person with the online nickname "elonmuskwhm" who they suspect is selling bitcoin for cash, which is probably illegal under several US laws. Now they want to extract information about who watched certain YouTube clips with a total of over 30,000 views.
In this order, the police want to retrieve the name, address, phone number, and user activity of all Google accounts that viewed the clips between January 1 and January 8, 2023. The authorities also want the IP addresses of people without Google accounts who viewed the videos.
Exactly what they think they can find by extracting information about many more people than the one they are looking for is not known as the police keep their cards close to their chest, but they believe that the information may be relevant to the material in an active investigation. The technique involved police using a secret name to send the suspect videos on YouTube demonstrating drone mapping and AR software - then they asked Google and YouTube who had viewed the videos.
The court ruled in favor of the prosecutors, but at the same time asked Google to keep quiet about the order, until now. Forbes points out that they cannot confirm or deny whether Google handed over the information to the authorities. Critics refer to the action as unconstitutional as it could potentially implicate innocent people in the case and violate the constitution's prohibition against stopping freedom of expression and freedom from unreasonable searches.