Keyword Warrants: When Your Google Searches Become Evidence

“The U.S. Government has been secretly ordering Google to turn over the data of people who type in certain search terms, such as the names, addresses and phone numbers of crime victims, according to a court document that was accidentally unsealed and then resealed, Forbes reported Monday.” These so called “keyword warrants” are another example of how government uses Big Tech companies to sidestep and undermine the rights protected under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

I posted that note to the firm’s page this week, and it deserves more than a paragraph. This is so because the practice reaches everyone who uses a search engine — which is to say, everyone. Read on and learn what a keyword warrant is, why it cannot be squared with the Fourth Amendment, and what to do if a dragnet like this produced the evidence in your case.

What Is a Keyword Warrant?

A traditional search warrant starts with a suspect. Police develop probable cause that a particular person committed a particular crime, and a judge issues a warrant particularly describing the place to be searched and the things to be seized. A keyword warrant inverts the process. The government does not know who committed the crime, so it orders Google to identify every person who typed a certain term into the search box during a certain window, then works backward from the list. The suspect is not the starting point of the investigation; the suspect is the output.

The examples in the Forbes report show how broad these orders run. In 2019, federal investigators in Wisconsin ordered Google to produce information on anyone who searched the name of a minor victim in a trafficking investigation, two spellings of her mother’s name, or her address over a 16-day span. In 2020, the government demanded information on anyone who looked up the address of an arson victim who was a witness in the federal racketeering case against R. Kelly. Also, investigators used keyword warrants in 2018 while hunting the serial bomber in Austin, Texas. Note what is missing from every one of these orders: a named suspect. Each person who ran the search — a reporter, a neighbor, a worried relative — lands on the government’s list.

Why Do Keyword Warrants Violate the Fourth Amendment?

The Fourth Amendment does not let the government search first and identify suspects later. It demands probable cause, and it demands that warrants particularly describe the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. The particularity requirement is not a technicality; the Framers wrote it to abolish the general warrant. Florida law carries the same command. Section 933.04, Florida Statutes, on the books unchanged since 1923, provides:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable seizures and searches shall not be violated and no search warrant shall be issued except upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation particularly describing the place to be searched and the person and thing to be seized.

A keyword warrant flunks this standard. This is so because the warrant does not describe a person at all — it describes a search term and sweeps in every human being who typed it. Probable cause that somebody searched a phrase is not probable cause that any particular member of the resulting list committed a crime. A warrant aimed at everyone is aimed at no one. That is the definition of a general warrant.

The government’s fallback is the third-party doctrine: you handed your searches to Google voluntarily, so you gave up any expectation of privacy in them. The Supreme Court has already rejected that reasoning for sensitive digital records. In Carpenter v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2206 (2018), the Court held that the government conducts a Fourth Amendment search when it collects a person’s historical cell-phone location records from his wireless carrier, even though a third party holds those records: “We decline to extend Smith and Miller to cover these novel circumstances. Given the unique nature of cell phone location records, the fact that the information is held by a third party does not by itself overcome the user’s claim to Fourth Amendment protection.” The Court faulted the government for failing to contend with the “seismic shifts in digital technology” that make it possible to track everyone, not just a suspect. That warning fits keyword warrants precisely. Your search history is a running diary of your health, your finances, and your fears. If cell-site records deserve protection, that diary deserves at least as much.

What About Geofence Warrants — and Could This Touch You in Polk County?

I covered this in a short video after the Supreme Court ruled:

The keyword warrant has a sibling. A geofence warrant draws a box around a crime scene on a map and orders Google to identify every device that passed through it during a set window. The New York Times reported in 2019 that Google keeps a location database, known internally as Sensorvault, holding detailed location records from hundreds of millions of devices, and that police had discovered it. The demands have exploded: Google fielded roughly 9,000 geofence requests in 2019, and by the transparency data Google released this August, geofence demands now account for about one quarter of all United States warrant demands the company receives. The defect is the same: everyone inside the box becomes a suspect for being nearby.

You do not have to be a criminal to end up on one of these lists. Suppose a house fire off SR 60 makes the evening news and you search the address to find out what happened; a keyword warrant for that address now includes you. Suppose your commute down US 27, or your crawl along I-4, takes you past a gas station at the wrong moment; a geofence warrant puts your phone inside the box. Investigators sorting those lists want a reason to move you from the list to the interview room, and ordinary, innocent behavior supplies it.

What Can You Do If a Dragnet Warrant Produced the Evidence Against You?

Litigate. If you are charged in Bartow and the discovery shows the case began with Google, the first step is to demand the warrant, the application, and the return, and read the four corners of that application. Next, file a motion to suppress under Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.190. Attack particularity: the warrant named a search term or a map box, not a person. Attack probable cause: suspicion that someone searched a phrase is mere suspicion as to you. Also, argue Carpenter: your searches and your movements are not unprotected simply because Google stores them. If the search was unlawful, everything that flowed from it — the identification, the interviews, the arrest — is fruit of the poisonous tree. As of this writing, no appellate court has ruled on the constitutionality of a keyword warrant. That is not a reason to concede the issue; it is a reason to raise it in every case where it appears. These warrants are an end-run around the Fourth Amendment, and courts cannot strike them down until defense lawyers put them squarely in front of a judge.

Editor’s update (July 2026): The courts have started to answer. In People v. Seymour (Colo. 2023), the Colorado Supreme Court became the first state high court to review a reverse keyword warrant; it recognized a protected privacy interest in a person’s Google search history, yet declined to suppress the evidence after finding the police acted in good faith. And in June 2026, the United States Supreme Court held in Chatrie v. United States that the government conducts a Fourth Amendment search when it obtains a person’s cellphone location data through a geofence demand, because an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in that information. The Court vacated the judgment below and sent the case back for further proceedings — it did not decide what a valid geofence warrant must contain, or whether one can issue at all. The suppression arguments described above are stronger today than when this article was written.

Legally reviewed by Tonmiel Rodriguez — last reviewed July 20, 2026.

Tonmiel Rodriguez is a criminal defense attorney in Bartow and is Board Certified in Criminal Trial Law by The Florida Bar. He defends cases built on searches of phones, accounts, and digital records across Polk, Highlands, Hardee, Osceola, and Hillsborough Counties. If the evidence against you began with a search of your phone, your home, or your online accounts, call The Rodriguez Law Office at (863) 774-4556.