The Infinite Brief

EPIC alleges that law enforcement is using Google, a private entity, to bypass the Fourth Amendment, which requires due process and probable cause before “searching or seizing” someone’s property.

EPIC alleges that Google has gone even beyond this voluntary commitment to help National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) find criminals who exploit children by using image hash matching, and it’s now also using image matching techniques that can look at different files to see whether or not they contain a certain image.

EPIC argues that Google or other companies could use similar algorithms to scan not just for images of exploited children, but also for other purposes such as determining if files contain religious views, political opinions, or “banned books.”