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Google Just Killed Warrants That Give Police Access To Location Data
(www.forbes.com)
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this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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Privacy
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Google's blog (linked in the article) offers more info on the changes. https://blog.google/products/maps/updates-to-location-history-and-new-controls-coming-soon-to-maps/
The key points are that Google Maps location history will be stored on-device, with an option to back it up (encrypted) to the cloud so if you switch devices you can keep the history. The default auto-delete will be three months, and you can increase or disable that limit.
I guess that means location history will no longer be accessible via the web site.
I don't think Google has implemented any E2EE system for backups before (correct me if I'm wrong). I wonder how exactly this will work.
Yes, this seems designed to target the broad "who was in this area" warrants. Must have been a big enough headache for them that they came up with this new system. For me, I keep this location on indefinitely. Has been handy for me in a couple situations: I'm a scientist and helped me reconstruct my field work locations when I lost some field notes, and it helped me contact trace when I caught covid!
arstechnica has a pretty good writeup about this.
As with all things Google the only way to win is to not play.