Google may have helped the privacy cause in hotel ruling from Supreme Court

In a ruling issued by the Supreme Court this week, Los Angeles saw an ordinance overturned in which they sought to give their police force the ability to seize information from hotel registries on demand and without a warrant. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing the majority opinion in the 5-4 ruling, deemed the ordinance unconstitutional and importantly, found the ordinance as written could have been extended to apply to any business, not just hotels. It was on that point that Google had jumped into the case via an amicus brief.

Google’s brief noted that the Los Angeles ordinance would have allowed the City to access information like their users’ Gmail, search history, and other data without any kind of prior judicial review or Google’s input or approval.

The ordinance also would not give a company like Google the opportunity to notify affected customers so that they could file their own objections to such a search. This is a situation that Google found itself in recently when government agencies sought data from WikiLeaks members. In the case of one, Jacob Applebaum, the government had succeeded in restraining Google from providing notice.

source: Re/code

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