AI
Government Belongs in Your Threat Model
The Avengers thought they understood the threat: Loki bad, SHIELD good. Then they found out SHIELD wanted to weaponize the Tesseract, and the World Security Council’s fallback plan was to nuke Manhattan. Granick uses that frame directly. When you hold private data, criminals are one threat. Government is another.
“That is a feature, not a bug.” — Jennifer Granick, on privacy slowing criminal prosecution
The FBI estimates one in three Americans has a criminal record. Chief Justice Roberts wrote in 2018 that a central aim of the framers was to place obstacles in the way of permeating police surveillance. Making prosecution harder is the point.
Why the Fourth Amendment Falls Short
The Fourth Amendment only applies to government, not private companies. “Search” only triggers when government invades a “reasonable expectation of privacy,” and courts define that term narrowly. The particularity requirement, designed for physical places, has not translated to databases.
Before digital records, privacy was protected by default: conversations vanished, movements left no trace. That default is gone. Search histories and location pings are retained for years. The Fourth Amendment has not filled that gap, and the weaknesses that existed on paper in earlier decades now matter in a way they never did before.
Three Vectors the Law Leaves Open
Data brokers harvest location data from cell phone apps, bundle hundreds of millions of records, and sell them to agencies, including both the Trump and Biden administrations. No warrant, no judicial review. In 2025, Texas law enforcement used purchased location data to track a woman crossing to Illinois for a legal abortion.
Two other vectors: government databases repurposed for new ends (immigration agencies sought direct access to 7 million IRS records), and reverse searches that ask “who was near this location?” A San Francisco geofence warrant covered two city blocks mid-day. Courts are split on whether any of this is constitutional.
Technical Interventions Security Engineers Can Take Now
The ACLU has litigated one case for 11 years and won in a single circuit. Technology moves faster. Granick’s ask is for security engineers to use what they already know.
Her checklist: have a plan before a government demand arrives. Notify users when law enforcement takes their data. Collect only what you need. Anonymize and aggregate where possible. Encrypt. Put government, alongside criminals, explicitly in your risk model. Google changed how it stores location data so geofence warrants are technically impossible. That is the model.
Notable Quotes
I am always angry. Jennifer Granick · ▶ 7:27
That is a feature, not a bug. Jennifer Granick · ▶ 13:15
technology really took our privacy away, Jennifer Granick · ▶ 36:18
Key Takeaways
- Government agencies, not just criminals, are a realistic threat actor for any company that holds sensitive user data.
- Data brokers sell hundreds of millions of location records to federal agencies without warrants, courts disagree on whether this is legal.
- Security engineers can reduce exposure through data minimization, anonymization, user notification policies, and treating government as a named risk.
About the Speaker
Jennifer Granick
Surveillance and Cybersecurity Counsel at ACLU. Expert on digital privacy, security, and surveillance law.