Special Counsel Jack Smith’s pursuit of a direct link between former President Donald Trump and the January 6 Capitol rioters faces a significant setback as crucial evidence, in the form of Google location data, is on the brink of vanishing.
Smith, currently navigating a sanctions motion in the federal election subversion case, had outlined a strategy involving the use of Google location data to trace the movements of MAGA rioters, connecting them from Trump’s speech at the Ellipse to their intrusion of the Capitol.
The ambitious plan aimed to provide a real-time visual representation of Trump’s influence on the rioters. However, the latest report from the Washington Post reveals that this instrumental visualization tool, reliant on Google’s data, is on the verge of obsolescence.
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According to the Saturday report, Google is set to discontinue the storage of location history, a decision that could significantly impede law enforcement’s ability to leverage this data in ongoing investigations.
The planned visualization, detailed in court filings related to Trump’s federal election subversion case, intended to display a map showing individuals congregating around the Ellipse as Trump urged them to head to the Capitol to “fight like hell.”
The map would then track these supporters in real-time as they proceeded down Pennsylvania Avenue towards the Capitol, where lawmakers were certifying President Biden’s victory.
The impending unavailability of this visualization tool, as highlighted by The Washington Post, underscores the brewing clash between law enforcement investigative priorities and concerns over personal privacy.
Google’s discontinuation of location history storage poses a formidable challenge to prosecutors aiming to identify and prosecute individuals involved in the Capitol breach on January 6.
Geofence warrants, a crucial aspect of investigations into the Capitol riot, have been utilized by law enforcement agencies to extract information from smartphone owners through ‘Google location history.’ This method relies on the regular recording of a person’s location through a combination of cell tower, internet protocol, wireless, GPS, and Bluetooth data.
While law enforcement can approximate locations through cell tower pings, Google’s data offers a notably higher precision, enabling investigators to determine whether someone was inside the Capitol or in close proximity.
The potential loss of access to this precise Google data raises profound questions about the impact on ongoing investigations and broader implications for cases related to the January 6 events.
