* Things like geofence warrants are used to surveil people who are merely within a given radius of a crime.
* Subpoenas don't have to be for criminal cases, they can also be civil or investigatory (eg congressional subpoenas).
* Things you don't think are wrong are often crimes. Abortion clinic visits in Texas are the most obvious example. Other examples are things like using someone else's WiFi without permission, using a fake name online, or carrying around things like screwdrivers (which are a burglary tool) or permanent markers (which are used for vandalism). Estimates suggest that the average American breaks 3-5 federal laws per day.
A couple of examples:
Alexa recordings were used in a criminal court: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/11/12/18089090/amazon-ech...
Amazon received 2000 subpoenas: https://www.theregister.com/2018/01/08/subpoenahappy_us_gove...
If you're going to go after someone, at least go after the right people.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/08/18/google-...
The right people to go after are the ones who are not bound by the fourth amendment and who are creating a huge pool of data that is available for the government to grab. Technical solutions that collate data have been very useful tools for government overreach over the last century. IBM's census tracking system in the 1930's is a very well-known example of this sort of technology: a well-meaning innovation that efficiently organized Germany's demographic data and made it accessible... to the Nazis who wanted to find Jews.
Here's an example of the government using data from big tech that they would never have been able to collect themselves due to the fourth amendment: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/11/12/18089090/amazon-ech...
Here are the stats on subpoenas, search warrants, and court orders that Google has received, showing how they have found over 80% of them to be not unreasonable: https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview?use...
If you were able to fight a subpoena for your own records (for example, because you owned the data instead of Google), I promise you that percentage would be a lot lower, solely because the incentives are different. Google doesn't particularly care about protecting you. Google cares a lot more than that about protecting its status with politicians. What this means is that they will do the minimum possible review on a subpoena for data on your account to not get sued by you.
