Geofence Warrants — viz: “tell us the names of everybody using a cellphone near this location at this time” — require platforms to collect, protect, wrangle and manage data they don’t actually have a business purpose for.

So Google put that data beyond their own ability to access it.

I’m amazed that the online-safety-activists are not shouting more loudly about this, because it’s much the same argument as for adopting end-to-end encryption for messenger services.

On Wednesday, Google announced it would soon change the way it would store and access users’ opt-in “Location History” in Google Maps, making the data retention period shorter, and making it impossible for the company to access it. That means it will no longer respond to “geofence warrants,” a controversial legal tool used by local and federal authorities to force Google to hand over information about all users within a given location during a specific timeframe.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/cyrusfarivar/2023/12/14/google-just-killed-geofence-warrants-police-location-data/?sh=771790202c86