Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich alleged that Google has continued to collect location data even after users turn off tracking on their smartphones and other devices, citing concerns from Google employees about the company’s data-collection practices.
Employees of Google shared concerns that media outlets, such as The New York Times, would discover the truth. “So there is no way to give a third party app your location and not Google?” a Google employee is quoted as saying in the complaint in a previously redacted section, as reported by the AZ Mirror. “This doesn’t sound like something we would want on the front page of the NYT.” As the AZ Mirror explained, the complaint against Google “is part of an ongoing consumer fraud lawsuit Brnovich first filed in May 2020 alleging that Google’s data collection schemes violated the state’s Consumer Fraud Act,” adding that “large portions of the lawsuit were redacted by the court at Google’s request.”
A “legal battle” then commenced in regards to what information could be released. Arizona’s Attorney General reportedly started the investigation into Google’s practices following an Associated Press article from 2018 titled, “AP Exclusive: Google tracks your movements, like it or not.”
“Google wants to know where you go so badly that it records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to,” reported Ryan Nakashima for AP in August 2018. “An Associated Press investigation found that many Google services on Android devices and iPhones store your location data even if you’ve used a privacy setting that says it will prevent Google from doing so.” Speaking with Fox Business, Brnovich said that, “The reality is that the stuff we’ve uncovered is shocking.”