And you might never know that you got caught in the dragnet. You might get swept up in one just because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time or looked up the wrong search term. The police are increasingly using tactics like reverse search warrants to grab the data of many people in the hope of finding their suspect among them. In fact, you don’t have to be suspected of a crime at all. If you read through cases of people charged with crimes relating to the events in Washington on January 6, you’ll find the FBI also obtained internal records from various social media platforms and mobile phone carriers.īut you don’t have to be an alleged insurrectionist for law enforcement to get data about you from another company. While they left a trail of digital evidence for investigators (and internet detectives) to follow, not all of that data was publicly available.

Many of the Capitol insurrectionists might be discovering this now, as cases against them are built with evidence taken from internet services like Facebook and Google. In that case, you might be surprised to learn how much of your data is in the hands of third parties, how much access law enforcement has to it, how it might be used against you, or what your rights are - if any - to prevent it. But maybe, like most American adults, you don’t read privacy policies very carefully if at all. If you’ve ever read a privacy policy, you may have noticed a section that says something about how your data will be shared with law enforcement, which means if the police demand it and have the necessary paperwork, they’ll likely get it.

Photo privacy a crime