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That's only really true in an exceptionally antagonistic environment.

If your house were burned down, and the police canvassed your neighbors do you expect your neighbors to stonewall the police or help you, by helping the police?

In the same scenario you would expect the tower owner to try and help solve that crime of their own volition. So knowing some of the requirements should be attainable in any civilized society.



Concretely, most of the time, Google is the executor of these warrants. Now it's totally possible that you will find a Google employee sympathetic to law enforcement who is willing to kick off a flume job to isolate the users who were in the vicinity.

But that request is not going to make it through normal channels. And most of the customer data (especially PII) is very tightly controlled, so likely no such person exists who can run that job without authorization, and even if they did, they would be immediately fired afterwards, and possibly subject to criminal prosecution for violation of their user's privacy, depending on jurisdiction.


I'll admit to disliking the color of your curtains and they'll find the jerrycan for my lawnmower and suddenly I'm the prime suspect for arson. Sorry neighbour I'm not talking to the cops, hope you have insurance.




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