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Comment by persistent | Hacker News Reader

Governments serve Google with over-broad search warrants frequently, but there is not information in this article stating or implying that Google responded to this or other similar warrants. Google has a whole department of attorneys dedicated to evaluating search warrants. They claim they won't comply with vague and overbroad warrants.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeKKHxcJfh0&feature=youtu.be...

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TFA says the warrant was executed.

> It was an aggressive technique, scooping up every Android phone in the area and trusting police to find the right suspects in the mess of resulting data. But the court found it entirely legal, and it was returned as executed shortly after.

> They claim they won't comply with vague and overbroad warrants.

Assumably it’s the judge’s opinion on this that matters, right? In the case of a national security letter this fight wouldn’t even be public. Assume the worst.

A judge would review the warrant before issuing it hopefully. I think Google can basically say "Look, this is a bad warrant and you'd be better off narrowing it a bit" and that would work in most cases.

You, as a defendant, can also challenge the warrant as part of your trial if you are caught, potentially getting the results of the search thrown out.

Can you if there's a national security "concern"?

The article states that Google complied. And I don't see how a 30 minute period from a 100-foot radius area is over-broad anyway.

It's unlimited in scope so it's pretty broad. There could have been any number of people passing through that area of space/time. A good standard for such warrants is when the police suspect a particular person and want to search for evidence of their whereabouts. A fishing expedition where the police have no suspects and just want to grind all available data is almost the definition of "vague and broad", if not that of "over-broad". In this case it seems that the police did not even have a concrete reason to believe that the perpetrator carried phones or used Google services.

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