Google concerns climb after firing vital workers

The tech giant's recent cut to an important team has raised alarm bells.

Jun 10, 2024 - 06:30

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Google concerns climb after firing vital workers

Technology industry layoffs are still wreaking havoc in 2024. So far this year, 317 tech companies have conducted layoffs, leaving over 90,000 people in the industry without jobs, according to data from Layoffs.

Google (GOOG) reportedly recently contributed to that number, laying off members of a vital team. The decision has raised red flags among its employees.

Roughly 10 members of Google’s Legal Investigations Support team, which is responsible for ensuring that law enforcement officials' requests for users’ private information are legal, were fired late last month.

Some of the requests the team processes include emergency queries from law enforcement needing private information to locate missing individuals who are victims of kidnappings, as well as those involved in school shootings or abuse.

The move to shrink the team, which now has fewer than 100 people, sparked concerns among employees who are part of the Alphabet Workers Union (Alphabet is Google’s parent company). They are questioning the company’s ability to protect public safety as billions use its search engine daily.

“As members of the LIS team, these workers are responsible for handling and responding to requests for user data made by law enforcement, the courts, and members of the public, as well as creating and operationalizing the programs and policies that safeguard user data and maintain compliance with Google’s legal obligations,” the Alphabet Workers Union wrote in a May 24 statement.

“Even before this week’s layoff, staffing shortages on this team had slowed Google’s ability to respond to requests, resulting in a significant backlog and increased risk to the integrity and security of sensitive user data,” the statement added.

The Google search engine page can be seen behind a woman wearing glasses.
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Since Bloomberg published a September 2023 report revealing law enforcement officials often use search warrants to gain access to Google’s location and search data made by individuals involved in “nonviolent cases” (and those who had no involvement in the crime they are investigating), Google has appeared to further distance itself from withholding that sensitive information. This may explain Google's decision to shrink the Legal Investigations Support team.

A year before the report came out, Google had already begun auto-deleting users’ location history, revealing visits to sensitive places such as abortion clinics, addiction treatment facilities, domestic violence shelters, and the like.

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Last year, Google announced a new feature to Google Maps that lets users save their location data on their own devices, blocking Google from accessing it. This also prevented law enforcement from demanding that information from Google.

Just recently, Google emailed users to notify them that they have until Dec. 1 this year to save their search histories on their mobile devices before it starts deleting their old data.