Delaware House passes bill to prohibit reverse keyword warrants

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]I want to bring things over to Delaware.

[00:00:02]So, when I was getting ready for today, one thing that I normally do, I look at some of the biggest headlines from all the different parts of our tri-state area. And I heard a couple of days ago Delaware House had actually moved to um pass a bill. It's called Wilson Bill to prohibit reverse keyword warrants. So, I was like, "Well, what's that? What's a reverse keyword warrant?" And essentially, I mean, I'm going to have an expert talk about this and help us break it down, but if I can give you like the most elementary level version of what I believe this to be, we already know that when the police are looking for a suspect, usually they go down like the rabbit hole of the different um pieces of evidence they have, or maybe they've got a description. So, they're looking for a needle in a haystack, right? Well, in this case, everything is turned upside down. For a person who is um let's say, maybe you just so happen to search something after watching like a true crime documentary. It's possible that something that you searched on Google or any other search engine could be used against you. So, we'll talk about that with Harry Maguire, who's joining us from PrivacyBeast CEO and also the founder. Harry, you deal with a lot of data privacy, help people learn how to erase their um digital footprint, um but also just how to be smarter online. And when I saw this headline and got to learning a little bit more, the very first person I thought to talk to was you. So, can I try to give that elementary level version of what reverse keyword searches are, and what the warrant would be about, but can you give us a more intelligent version of it?

[00:01:41]Uh sure. Now, that was a great summary.

[00:01:43]So, a lot of it is the question is how heavy-handed the government's being with data and how much privacy people are receiving when they, you know, are not actively being targeted by a federal investigation or local investigation.

[00:01:57]So, the whole concept of a warrant is when police are trying to verify a specific data or do an investigation on a single subject.

[00:02:05]If you go back, this is about about 5 or 10 years ago, there was a a big news story around tower dumping, if you remember that. Where police would go to a cell phone provider, like an AT&T or Verizon, and say, "Give us all the data from a specific cell phone tower on this day or this this time range."

[00:02:25]And it was a massive amount of data and then they would sort through it and try to find the person they wanted.

[00:02:29]This current geofencing reverse warrants, this is a essentially an evolution of tower dumping. This is the digital equivalent, right? Where now, um they they can go to, um you know, Google and say, "Give us all the information you have of people within this specific geo geographical radius."

[00:02:50]And then the police or the authorities will sort through all the data they get, try to find the sub the suspect or the subject of their investigation, and then reverse it into specific things they can ask for a personalized warrant on. So, it's just a heavy-handed way of trying to capture a broad swath of data, sort through it, including innocent people's information, and you know, almost go on a fishing expedition digitally.

[00:03:16]You actually kind of touched on the end of your answer there. I understand in a way how this would be helpful to law enforcement as they're trying to narrow down their searches to find the person that they're looking for in particular.

[00:03:28]But for the average American, the average citizen, why would this be something that is a little more concerning?

[00:03:35]Oh, it's terrifying. It's a Orwellian future if we're not careful. So, the issue is not just that single geofence data grab where the government's getting, "Hey, these are all the people in this area." Or the people who are returned, maybe it's thousands of people coming back in a specific reverse warrant situation.

[00:03:55]The risk is that data is not ephemeral.

[00:03:58]It's not used one time for one investigation and then thrown away. The data is stored because of the Freedom of Freedom of Information Act, right?

[00:04:05]Because of how government record keeping happens. They they store the data. Um that could be cross-referenced later on.

[00:04:14]That could be proof that you're at that specific area. What if the government is researching a person who happens to be next door to a big political rally? They might get a whole bunch of data from people not part of the investigation, but they know were at a specific location at a specific time. Or what if there's an an abortion clinic next door or other sensitive type facilities?

[00:04:38]That's the scary part. And nowadays with AI and with the massive increase in compute power, you hear about Palantir in the news and the billions of dollars of government contracts they're getting now. And Palantir is essentially a data AI mining uh powerhouse.

[00:04:58]Well, if they plug Palantir into all the previous reverse warrant data they they slurped up and hoovered up, well, they can make some some pretty scary correlations and triangulations between an innocent person who's just going about their business and whatever, you know, they're looking for in their latest data study. So, it's not just about the single investigation. It's about should the government have that massive amount of of non-warrant data collected on broad Americans?

[00:05:31]I mean, that is going to be the big question. Because while the House passed this bill, now it goes on to the Senate.

[00:05:38]They're going to have to take their own fine-tooth comb and comb through this to decide if they want to move forward with with it as well. And then it also has another layer to get through after that.

[00:05:47]The last part that you were just talking about there, that really leans on geofencing. I'm learning the term. I'm learning the terms. But >> with the the keyword search, one thing that I thought was interesting, you mentioned like the abortion clinics. If somebody was just trying to search for help, like let's say they wanted to look up abortion pills, but they might be in a state where abortion is banned, could this potentially put them in a pickle, a legal pickle?

[00:06:15]So, maybe.

[00:06:17]>> [laughter] >> Um when they do a broad search, that's a great question. So, they do a broad search like that, a geofence search for a keyword, um the tech companies, like a Google, usually returns anonymized data first. So, it's a hash or some mathematical fuzzing of your identity. They're not going to give a list of these 500 people were at this square block in, you know, in Philadelphia or New York. It's going to be a little bit more broad. And then the authorities will sort through that broad quasi-anonymized data and say, "That one. That record right there, that's the one I'm looking for because it matches these other you know, data points they have." So, there is a little slight layer of fuzziness there. However, depending on how the big tech companies de-identify the data, which is the term, um it may be able to be linked to other uh uh reverse warrant searches or geofencing searches later on. So, say you get an anonymous ID. You are person 123, but then later they see 123 at a different location, they might be able to connect those two dots. So, there's a little a lot of unknowns on how the actual data is returned, but I could absolutely see ways where it could violate your privacy even years down the line.

[00:07:35]All right. Well, Harry, thank you for helping us try to make some sense of everything that's going on here in Delaware. For those of you residents who may be watching with us and uh viewing this in the comment section.

[00:07:46]We're on Tik Tok right now. So, a lot of people are actually talking and chiming in as you were talking. For those of you guys who are interested, this is House Bill, I believe, 145. If you want to go look it up. Again, the House did go ahead and pass it, but it still has to get through the Senate. I suggest you read up on what it is, what it isn't, and maybe this interview will help you get through it as well. Harry, thank you for your time and for your expertise, as always.

[00:08:12]Hey, thanks so much for having me. No problem.